Heretic

Histones deacetylation - new lead to degenerative diseases?

2011-12-30T23:52:00.013-05:00

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This recent article (and that paper) discuss the link between histones abnormality and schizophrenia.

Histones acetylation reduction or "deacetylation" cripples the ability of DNA to encode proteins thus can affects the entire cellullar metabolic and regenerative apparatus, producing effects probably resembling genetic disorders. (What are histones? Read here)

The study reports particulary strong histone anomaly among schizophrenic patients of young age. This suggests a possible neurodegenerative process indicating a possible mechanism of the pathology of a young brain, that may lead to schizophrenia later in life.

Questions to think about:

Could histone deacetylation anomaly lead to other common degenerative diseases?
How does it affect mitochondria?
Is there a connection between wheat histones (*) (or this) and human histones?

Few more facts about histones and neurological health:

- Since acetylation reduction is done by deacetylation enzymes called "deacetylase", inhibiting of deacetylase should restore the required level of histone acetylation. What are the common deacetylase inhibitors? Quote from the wiki article:

HDIs [Histone Deacetylase Inhibitors] fall into several groupings, in order of decreasing potency[6]:
hydroxamic acids (or hydroxamates), such as trichostatin A,
cyclic tetrapeptides (such as trapoxin B), and the depsipeptides,
benzamides,
electrophilic ketones, and
the aliphatic acid compounds such as phenylbutyrate and valproic acid.

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More references:
Scientists discover a brain cell malfunction in schizophrenia
( Note: the link above as well as the original article twit was posted on this blog )

Note (*): interestingly, wheat uses histone disruptors to fight funghi. New wheat variety introduced in the last century was specifically bread to resist funghi and molds. Recent wheat variety = heart diesease and cancer. Earlier wheat, 19-th century and back = no prob! Or is it too far out to conclude that?
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More starch more breast cancer recurrence

2011-12-11T22:12:00.007-05:00

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New analysis based on WHEL study titled "Starch Intake May Influence Risk for Breast Cancer Recurrence" presented at the 2011 CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, held Dec. 6-10, 2011.

Quotes:

“The results show that it’s not just overall carbohydrates, but particularly starch,” said Jennifer A. Emond, M.S., a public health doctoral student at the University of California, San Diego. “Women who increased their starch intake over one year were at a much likelier risk for recurring.”
Researchers conducted a subset analysis of 2,651 women who participated in the Women’s Healthy Eating and Living (WHEL) Dietary Intervention Trial, a plant-based intervention trial that enrolled about 3,088 survivors of breast cancer. WHEL researchers studied breast cancer recurrence and followed the participants for an average of seven years.
...
The change in starch intake was “independent of dietary changes that happened in the intervention arm,” Emond said. “It is independent of more global changes in diet quality.”

I have to comment on the following quote: . “The WHEL dietary trial, even though it focused on fruits and vegetables, fiber and fat, didn’t really have a specific carbohydrate goal,” Emond said.

Time and time again studies focus on some secondary issues such as which particular vegetable or fruit selection affects some outcome while at the same time ignoring a major issue of macronutrient ratios! Such analyses often come as afterthoughts and end up using incomplete or partial data, just because the study proponents didn't bother to measure a major variable. Now they seem surprized finding an "elephant" in their lab! The biggest kicker is that vegetables - the one "healthy" diet aspect that they WHEL study authors did focused to the detriment of other more real issues, turned out to be irrelevant as far as cancer was concerned! (see the study I discuss further down)

Even though the results suffer from the fact that the original study methodology wasn't properly focused on the issue that mattered, the results are consistent with other studies. For example this one:

"Carbohydrates and the Risk of Breast Cancer among Mexican Women"
Isabelle Romieu, Eduardo Lazcano-Ponce, Luisa Maria Sanchez-Zamorano, Walter Willett and Mauricio Hernandez-Avila

The study showed a very strong breast cancer promoting effect of carbohydrate consumption: for every additional 1% of carbohydrate calories consumed above 52%, the relative risk of breast cancer was incrementally increasing by about 10%!

Consistent also with the Italian data:

"Dietary glycemic index, glycemic load, and the risk of breast cancer in an Italian prospective cohort study", Sabina Sieri et al.

The study showed that a 56% higher glycaemic load (from 96g/d to 150g/d) produced 2.53 times higher relative risk of breast cancer among Italian women.

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The following paper (also based on the same WHEL study as the headline study!) demonstrated that a low fat high vegetable diet was useless for fighting cancer!

"Influence of a Diet Very High in Vegetables, Fruit, and Fiber and Low in Fat on Prognosis Following Treatment for Breast Cancer." John P. Pierce, PhD; Loki Natarajan, PhD; Bette J. Caan, et al. The Women's Healthy Eating and Living (WHEL) Randomized Trial. JAMA. 2007;298:289-298.

Quote:

Among survivors of early stage breast cancer, adoption of a diet that was very high in vegetables, fruit, and fiber and low in fat did not reduce additional breast cancer events or mortality during a 7.3-year follow-up period.

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Similar pattern with the ovarian cancer:

"Nutrient dietary patterns and the risk of breast and ovarian cancers." Edefonti V, et al., Int J Cancer. 2008 Feb 1;122(3):609-13.

... Cases were 2,569 breast cancers and 1,031 ovarian cancers hospitalized in 4 Italian areas between 1991 and 1999. Controls were 3,413 women from the same hospital network. Dietary habits were investigated through a validated food-frequency questionnaire. ... The animal products pattern and the unsaturated fats pattern were inversely associated with breast cancer (OR = 0.74, 95% CI: 0.61-0.91 and OR = 0.83, 95% CI: 0.68-1.00, respectively, for the highest consumption quartile), whereas the starch-rich pattern was directly associated with it (OR = 1.34, 95% CI: 1.10-1.65). The vitamins and fiber pattern was inversely associated with ovarian cancer (OR = 0.77, 95% CI: 0.61-0.98), whereas the starch-rich pattern was directly associated with it (OR = 1.85, 95% CI: 1.37-2.48). In conclusion, the starch-rich pattern is potentially an unfavorable indicator of risk for both breast and ovarian cancers, while the animal products and the vitamins and fiber patterns may be associated with a reduced risk of breast and ovarian cancers, respectively.

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[side issue: carbs and HDL putting it here as a reminder for myself to write some more on it]
"Carbohydrate intake and HDL in a multiethnic population." Am J Clin Nutr. 2007 Jan;85(1):225-30.

"Previous research has identified ethnic differences in cholesterol and other blood fat levels that couldn't be explained by genes, obesity, lifestyle factors or diet, Merchant and his team note, but these analyses usually looked at dietary fat, not carbohydrate consumption"

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Another Italian study, similar pattern:

"Intake of macronutrients and risk of breast cancer."
Franceschi S, Favero A, Decarli A, Negri E, La Vecchia C, Ferraroni M, Russo A, Salvini S, Amadori D, Conti E, Montella M, Giacosa A.
Lancet. 1996 May 18;347(9012):1351-6.

... FINDINGS: The risk of breast cancer decreased with increasing total fat intake (trend p ? 0.01) whereas the risk increased with increasing intake of available carbohydrates (trend p=0.002). The odds ratios for women in the highest compared with the lowest quintile of energy-adjusted intake were 0.81 for total fat and 1.30 for available carbohydrates. Starch was the chief contributor to the positive association with available carbohydrates. ... Conversely, the intakes of saturated fatty acids, protein, and fibre were not significantly associated with breast-cancer risk. ...

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Update (25-12-2011)

I am slapping this paper here quickly for the reference although it is not strictly on-topic (thanks Kiran)

Mean life span of CR sucrose-fed rats was significantly greater than all other groups [including starch fed CR]

Feed	Corn starch	Sugar
100% cal	720	659
60% cal	726	890

The rats diet consisted of 14% protein, 10% fat, and 66% sucrose or cornstarch. The numbers are the average lifespans of rats in days (standard deviation is about +/-20days). 100% cal means an ad-libidum diet. 60% cal = calorie-restriction diet.
(this study needs a discussion)
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Arterial plaque = glucose + insulin, C14 traced study

2011-12-01T21:29:00.003-05:00

Atheroma (from wiki)

A "blast from the past": two old forgotten papers that were never followed up, as far as I was able to find. I wonder why not?

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INSULIN STIMULATED LIPOGENESIS IN ARTERIAL TISSUE IN RELATION TO DIABETES AND ATHEROMA
R. W. Stout, Lancet p702,1968

Summary

Discussion (p1 of 2)

Discussion (p2 of 2)

INSULIN STIMULATION OF CHOLESTEROL SYNTHESIS BY ARTERIAL TISSUE

R.W. Stout, Lancet p467,1969

Summary

Discussion (p1 of 2)

Discussion (p2 of 2)

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Dav0 found a more recent paper by Stout (thanks):

Insulin and Atheroma: 20-Yr Perspective, Robert W Stout, MD, DSc, FRCP

Quote:

Five population studies have shown that insulin responses to glucose are higher in populations at greater risk of cardiovascular disease. Many of the hyperinsulinemic populations also had upper-body obesity, hypertriglyceridemia, lower highdensity lipoprotein (HDL) levels, and hypertension. These prospective studies support an independent association between hyperinsulinemia and ischemic heart disease, although their results differ in detail. Hyperinsulinemia is associated with raised triglyceride and decreased HDL cholesterol levels.

Alzheimer's: The detrimental role of a high carbohydrate diet

2011-11-07T22:29:00.002-05:00

Interesting paper just published:
"Nutrition and Alzheimer's disease: The detrimental role of a high carbohydrate diet", S.Seneff, G.Wainwright, L.Mascitelli, European Journal of Internal Medicine 22 (2011) 134–140.

Quote:

"A ketogenic diet has been found to be therapeutic in AD patients [72,73]. It involves an extremely high fat diet, with up to 88% of calories derived from fats. This benefit may be likely due in part to the bioavailability of a plentiful supply of fats to repair damaged membranes. However, this diet leads to the generation of a significant concentration of ketone bodies in the blood serum, which can be used as an alternative fuel to glucose ..."

A very good and brief summary by Ted Hutchison is here (TUESDAY, 11 OCTOBER 2011).
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Is t2 diabetes result of mitochondrial destruction?

2011-10-04T23:41:00.011-04:00

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1. A hypothesis:

- Metabolic syndrome and diabetes t2 results from mitochondrial destruction caused by overfeeding with glucose (and fructose but only in the liver), taking place over many years. An individual mitochondrion has (hypothetical assumption!) a fixed maximal total energy yield out of the two main energy sources: glucose (or glucose+fructose in the liver) plus fatty acids.

There is a self-clamping regulatory mechanism preventing mitochondrial overfeeding by fatty acids, by means of Malonyl-CoA/CPT1 feedback (see Peter’s discussion), but there are no very effective self-regulation feedbacks for glucose, only a partial mechanism reducing the glucose transport into in the cells! This partial mechanism is mediated by insulin regulating the transport of glucose into a cell through the cellullar membrane. This regulatory mechanism is not always effective or fast because the insulin secretion is not local to the cell, rather it is produced in the pancreas whose rate of secretion is regulated by the autonomous nervous system and pancreating glucose concentration involving many factors other than some particular mitochondria overload. Furthermore, the insulin regulation (blocking) of glucose can be overriden by high glucose concentration.

2. Conclusions.

A straight conclusion would be that a high carbohydrate diet can indeed be healthy and avoid diabetes as long as it restricts calories to prevent mitichondrial overfeeding. What is the limit? In my guesstimate (based on published literature) - probably around 25kcal/kg for women and 30kcal/kg for men.

A second straight conclusion is that a high fat low carb diet automatically avoids mitochondrial deterioration and thus diabetes among other degenerative diseases, by its built-in biochemical overfeeding protection mechanism. (note: my daily caloric intake on a high animal fat diet, is and has been around 20-25kcal/kg since 1999).

A third conclusion concerns a situation of the cells with the insufficient number of or worn-out mitochondria. Having lower total mitochondrial energy throughput, such cells may be forced to over-rely upon and and over-utilize the Penthose Phosphate Pathway (PPP) (also called the Penthose Shunt) which takes place in the cytosol volume outside of the mitochondria. This has originally been proposed by Dr. Jan Kwasniewski, the author of Optimal Diet in the 1970-ties. I found his idea fascinating, largely because there was no easy or obvious way of proving it at the time, and last but not least - it flew right against the medical dogma! Interestingly the PPP is mainly a synthesis pathways resulting in lipids and lipoproteins manufactured inside the cells, in-situ. Such as the infamous "cholesterol" plaque perhaps? Out of glucose? Like suggested by R.W. Stout in his 1968 and 1969 Lancet papers?

--- Part 2 (9-Oct-2011) ---

3. Declining energy syndrome and carbo-loading trap.

More conclusions can be drawn out of this simple hypothesis. If t2 diabetes is the results of mitochondrial decline caused by overfeeding (carbs or by a combination of carbs and fats) then it should be accompanied by a steadily declining energy yield.

Suppose for the sake of discussion that a healthy individual consumes 30kcal/kg/day, leading active live. If he looses 10% of his mitochondria he would be able to process only 27kcal/kg/day. Less energy to work, more lethargic, getting tired sooner. What do we do when that happens? I was in that situation 15 years ago. Falling energy level at work, especially after 3pm. I snacked! I snacked on carbs! Why on carbs? Because I couldn't snack on fat! (even if I didn't believe that fat is harmful...) Fats don't work if you have mitochondrial deficiency because of the Malonyl-CoA/CPT1 feedback(*). A mitochondrion can only process a certain maximum amount of energy out of fat and that's it! If your total mitochndrial yield declined from 30 to 27 during the first 20 years of dietary abuse, then 27 is all what you can get out of fat! But you can still push your partially worn-out "engine" into overdrive by flooding it with extra glucose! It will sputter and spew out lots of smoke polluting your cells with free radicals, AGE's etc but it would allow you to bring your yield back to the previous level of 30. At least for a time being because the process of mitochondrial decline has accelerated due to the pushing them over the limit and the ensuing end product toxicity. So instead of 27kcak/kg/d, now the maximum available yield drops by another 10%, this time over 2 years. You can now safely draw 24kcal/kg/d out of fat or carbs or a combination of both. However if you want to stay awake at work you have got to load up on carb snack now by 20% not 10% over your maximum limits creating more problems, requiring a lot more insulin to overcame the natural barrier that your body cells have enacted against your plan. It also requires maintaining a high blood glucose level to speed up diffusion across cellular boundaries. Which particular cells of your body will be the first in line to see the high glucose and high insulin? Your arterial endothelium! Your liver!

This appears to be a run-away process where your tissues cells would keep enacting more and more barriers agaisnt excessive metabolism, your conscious brain will make you snack like crazy on carbs to maintain the same energy level, your pancreas will try keeping up with that pumping your insulin, your immune system will work overtime trying to clean up the mess after glucose and eventually it will also try saving your body tissue by attacking the source of the excessive insulin - pancreating beta cells, in some cases it will try even to sequester the excessive insulin floating in your bloodstream, and last but not least your poor mitochondria will keep dying! Eventually one of more of the players described above will give up. If you stop snacking and keep below your maximum metabolic yield, you will feel hungry and lethargic. Especially if you have to work 9-5. If you don's stop snacking your blood glucose would go up until you develop kidney failure. If you force you blood glucose below renal dumping threshold (about 160mg/dl) by injecting insulin you will develop heart failure or arteriosclerosis (or both). What to do? This will be the next subject.

4. The way out - what exactly happens (and when) if you start curing yourself of diabetes using a high fat low carb diet.

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More references, links and thoughts are in this file.

Footnote:

*) I am speculating but there seems to be cases when the fat-clamp mechanism may also be defeated, leading to fatty acids overload(+). This condition is also harmful creating large amount of toxins that require a massive cleanup operation my the immune system (see Masterjohn's article, in my reference file above). I suspect that this is one reason behind the so-called "low-carb flu" syndrome sometimes reported by inexperienced diabetic low carb dieters. It is interesting that fat overload (if that does happen, however unlikely) may be as unpleasant as glucose overload!

Footnote to a footnote:

+) Indeed it does happen! Peter just posted an interesting discussion about this issue here. A must read! It appears that when the adipose tissue develops insulin resistance, it is then capable of releasing fat into triglyceride particles and into the bloodstream under the condition of falling but still higher than normal insulin level! Fatty acids are then forced into the cells and a smaller fraction are then forced into mitochondria. The free fatty acids left-over inside the cell (but outside of the mitochondria) become the main cause of the insulin resistance and the cause of major cellullar cleanup operation. I have a mental picture of my old sputtering "Komar" motorbike with its carburator overflooded with gasoline...

This makes a fascinating fork in the metabolic failure modes under overfeeding. On one hand, the overfeeding with glucose may be wearing off the mitochondria and also forcing the excess fuel into adipocytes. On the other hand releasing those excessive fats from the adipocytes into the bloodstream may be setting up the physiological insulin resistance and still damaging the cells even more through the high free fatty acids level in the cytosol. Interestingly this excessive fatty acids may as likely (if not more so) come from the internal source (adipose tissue) than from a diet! It also explains why many obese people experience a health breakdown only AFTER they undergo a weight loss, especially after a repeatable weight loss and weight gain cycling.

A weight loss diet is therefore ALWAYS a HIGH FAT diet even if a person eats nothing but lean veggies!

--- Part 3 (15-Oct-2011) ---

The reason I am considering this mitochondrial decline model seriously is because of my experience. Back in July 1999 when I started my low carb high animal fat diet (almost by accident) I did experience a noticeable lack of energy, light-headedness and dizziness for a couple of weeks. Also: low blood pressure and reduced blood clotting that showed up by excessive and random bruising on my hands.
The worst part of it (dizziness and weakness) last only for 2 weeks. I didn't have diabetes just metabolic syndrome and hypoglycemic episodes. In my case, I was able to combat those initial low carb startup difficulties by carrying with me some high fat snacks such as Swiss cheese, Polish saussage and nuts.

The main problem is: when you stop consuming excessive carbohydrates then your damaged mitochondria might not be able to deliver enough energy out of fat and carbs to sustain your previous energy expenditure. You do feel the loss of energy immediately, and more hunger, therefore: You must slow down!

The only way for your mitochondria to recover or for your tissue to stop deteriorating and then regenerate(**) is to maintain the lower caloric intake compatible with your maximal mitochondrial yield. It will recover! This is the good news. The bad news is that it will take a few years!

Footnote:

**) I am not sure if mitochondria can individually regenerate by themselves or if the only way is for the body to regrow the new cells from stem-cells.

Yes to both, see this comment by Dr. Jack Kruse, on Peter's blog.

The low carb high fat therapy can be divided into 3 stages.

a) Switch-over

This is when the initial difficulty will show up. For diabetics and elderly this could be severe enough to warrant some medical supervision. Your body, digestive system and metabolic apparatus is switching over from carbohydrates to animal fats as the main energy source. There are hundreds of grams of enzymes circulating in your system that are no longer needed and have to be disposed off. Enzymes are protein. you will excrete their end products in urine, during this stage. Ketone bodies will show up in urine since your liver will be producing them more than your body tissue are able (yet) to utilize as fuel. Fortunately ketones in urine are in this case inconsequential but one has to be aware of it because of the rampant scare-mongering propagated by some uninformed people. I have seen many cases of people being scared by ketones and abandoned a low carb high fat diet, to their detriment. This stage last typically from 2 week to 2 months.

b) Rapid at first, then gradual improvement, disappearance of most chronic disease symptomes.

At this stage, most diabetic patients will experience disappearance of all or of most of the symptoms. Also, other chronic disease will show a lesser or stronger reversal, for example: auto-immune diseases, chronic intestinal diseases, arteriosclerosis, cardiac diseases, vascular diseases, neurological etc. However, the energy level may still be lower than on the standard high carb high caloric diet. Good news is that this yield will no longer be deteriorating. It will begin to slowly improve.

Many changes will take place at this stage, for example:

Eating and snacking habits will be completely modified.
Hunger will disappear, one will have to eat only once or twice a day. There will be no "toxic" hunger!(***) Total caloric intake will automatically and painlessly come down by about 30%, compared with the previous high carb nutrition. Please notice how close this ties with the Caloric Restriction programme! The low carb high fat diet is the Caloric Restriction program without hunger! For diabetic patients, all symptoms should disappear during this period. Most patients (except dm t1) will no longer need diabetic drugs or insulin. However - if they go back to a high carb diet, their diabetes will return.
Breathing rate will go down. An interesting side effect will be an ability to free-dive for a longer periods of time due to lower carbon dioxide release per calorie due to fat oxidation chemistry and due to an overall lower energy expenditure!.
Ability to better withstand cold temperature and cold weather.
Greater resistant to stress and alleviation of some neurological disorders, mood disorders, bad temper etc. This is a big and important effect! The low carb high fat metabolism is accompanied by a significantly different endocrine reaction against stress stimuli. A stress will no longer trigger a "panic paralyzis" reaction or initiate a panic attack, but will instead stimulate a generally pleasant and always useful rush of energy! The effects of stress hormones upon the neural tissues will be much less harmful in the presence of ketone bodies as in ketogenic diet, than in their absence as is more typical under the high carb diets in metabolic syndrome. Ketone bodies are not produced when insulin and glucose levels are too high! More on the effect of stress hormones, ketone bodies and glucose upon the neural tissue is discussed here.
Greater resistant against infections, viral and bacterial. No more seasonal flu!
Complete prevention of tooth decay and dental plaque. I have seen cases of molar teeth broken in half self-healed by sealing off of the cleavage.
Improved cholesterol level and profile. One notable exception: patients with fatty liver disease, the level of LDL may climb to a very high value, I have seen as high as 700md/dl sustained over a couple of years. No adverse health impact, other than scaring a "beejesus" out of some doctors... . Note that after the fatty liver recovers, LDL comes down.
Lower capacity to tolerate a once off high carbohydrate meal (or high intake of alcohol). At this stage, people with metabolic syndrome and diabetics must still be careful to actually measure their daily intake of carbs and ensure it is within the strictly limited band. Typically about 50g per day. Failure to observe this limit results in unpleasant symptoms and is hazardous to one's health.

Footnote:

***) The term "toxic hunger" as coined by Fuhrman, is in my opinion probably related to a falling level of glucose and insulin from a high value below the level sufficient to sustain glucose metabolism (in metabolic syndrome) but still too high to allow burning of one's body fat. This leads to a condition where some or all body tissues are temporarily starved of energy. In a non-diabetic, insulin and glucose levels do not go too high thus insulin can quickly go down in between the meals prompting the release of the stored body fat.

High insulin = low leptin = burning glucose not fat.
Low insulin = high leptin = burning fat not glucose.

A very weak feeling of a slight hunger under ketogenic body fat "burning" can be easily overcome or forgotten, and is totally different from a "panicky" acute and almost painful hunger pangs experienced by diabetics and people with metabolic syndrome.

c) Long term recovery

After several years on the low carb high fat diet, one's energy level will gradually come back to the previous level (like in one's 30-ties). This is probably due to tissue regeneration from stem cells. In my experience this will take a minumum of 7 years. An ability to tolerate a once-off higher intake of carbohydrates (typ. up to 150g) will come back at this stage. People who had diabetes may probably (I am hypothesizing) be able to come back to some kind of medium carb medium caloric diet if they wanted to, without getting diabetes because they will no longer be insulin resistant.

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A must-read:
"Metabolic flexibility and the identical twins"

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How Our Genes Respond to the Foods We Eat

2011-09-24T19:54:00.005-04:00

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Interesting and important research coming from Berit Johansen,Ingerid Arbo, Hans-Richard Brattbakk et al., from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (note *):

Feed Your Genes: How Our Genes Respond to the Foods We Eat

Butter

Quotes:

If you could ask your genes to say what kinds of foods are best for your health, they would have a simple answer: one-third protein, one-third fat and one-third carbohydrates. That's what recent genetic research from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) shows is the best recipe to limit your risk of most lifestyle-related diseases.

NTNU researchers Ingerid Arbo and Hans-Richard Brattbakk have fed slightly overweight people different diets, and studied the effect of this on gene expression.

"We have found that a diet with 65% carbohydrates, which often is what the average Norwegian eats in some meals, causes a number of classes of genes to work overtime," ... "This affects not only the genes that cause inflammation in the body, which was what we originally wanted to study, but also genes associated with development of cardiovascular disease, some cancers, dementia, and type 2 diabetes -- all the major lifestyle-related diseases," she says.

"Both low-carb and high-carb diets are wrong," says Johansen. "But a low-carb diet is closer to the right diet. A healthy diet shouldn't be made up of more than one-third carbohydrates (up to 40 per cent of calories) in each meal, otherwise we stimulate our genes to initiate the activity that creates inflammation in the body." This is not the kind of inflammation that you would experience as pain or an illness, but instead it is as if you are battling a chronic light flu-like condition. Your skin is slightly redder, your body stores more water, you feel warmer, and you're not on top mentally. Scientists call this metabolic inflammation.

It was not only inflammatory genes that were putting in overtime, as it would turn out. Some clusters of genes that stood out as overactive are linked to the most common lifestyle diseases.
"Genes that are involved in type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's disease and some forms of cancer respond to diet, and are up-regulated, or activated, by a carbohydrate-rich diet," says Johansen.

"We're not saying that you can prevent or delay the onset of Alzheimer's if you eat right, but it seems sensible to reduce the carbohydrates in our diets," she suggests.

The immune system operates as if it is the body's surveillance authority and police. When we consume too many carbohydrates and the body is triggered to react, the immune system mobilizes its strength, as if the body were being invaded by bacteria or viruses.
"Genes respond immediately to what they have to work with. It is likely that insulin controls this arms race," Johansen says. "But it's not as simple as the regulation of blood sugar, as many believe. The key lies in insulin's secondary role in a number of other mechanisms. A healthy diet is about eating specific kinds of foods so that that we minimize the body's need to secrete insulin. The secretion of insulin is a defense mechanism in response to too much glucose in the blood, and whether that glucose comes from sugar or from non-sweet carbohydrates such as starches (potatoes, white bread, rice, etc.), doesn't really matter."

Johansen has some encouraging words, however, for those of us who have been eating a high carbohydrate diet. "It took just six days to change the gene expression of each of the volunteers," she says, "so it's easy to get started. But if you want to reduce your likelihood of lifestyle disease, this new diet will have to be a permanent change."

The best is to cut down on potatoes, rice and pasta, and to allow ourselves some of the good stuff that has long been in the doghouse in the refrigerator.
"Instead of light products, we should eat real mayonnaise and sour cream," Johansen says, "and have real cream in your sauce, and eat oily fish.

Fountain-of-youth genes

Johansen's research also shows that some genes are not up-regulated, but rather the opposite -- they calm down rather than speed up.

"It was interesting to see the reduction in genetic activity, but we were really happy to see which genes were involved. One set of genes is linked to cardiovascular disease. They were down-regulated in response to a balanced diet, as opposed to a carbohydrate-rich diet," she says. Another gene that was significantly differently expressed by the diets that were tested was one that is commonly called "the youth gene" in the international research literature.
"We haven't actually stumbled on the fountain of youth here," Johansen laughs, "but we should take these results seriously. The important thing for us is, little by little, we are uncovering the mechanisms of disease progression for many of our major lifestyle-related disorders."

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(I wish to express my thanks to chili_in_a_can from McDougall's vegan forum for publishing the article link)

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Contact: Berit Johansen, Department of Biology, NTNU
TEL. +47 73 59 86 91 E-MAIL: berit.johansen at bio dot ntnu dot no

More articles on this topic:

What should we eat to stay healthy?

Best diet: One-third protein, carbs, fat

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*) Note the effect this article may have had in Norway, recently (December 2011): link

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Destruction of economy by parasitic governments and financial institutions

2011-09-08T07:45:00.000-04:00

The destruction of our economy by parasitic governments and financial institutions

Present

Most countries’ financial centers and governments are currently in the process of expanding the supply of world currencies and cheap credit, in order to boost their own budgets, salaries and political power and to avoid recessions.   One of the effects of this policy is the protection of their own personal wealth consisting of paper assets such as bond and stock funds that would otherwise have collapsed.

Past

A similar expansion of the monetary supply has historically led to the de-industrialization of entire regions or countries that followed such policies for a sustainable period of time, typically over several generations.   On the surface, the mechanism of such de-industrialization seems to work by inflating the costs of doing business faster than the price inflation of manufactured goods and services produced by affected companies, thus destroying profitability, especially when a vast supply of goods is available from peripheral provinces or from other countries. One such example was the 5th century Roman Empire (see Fall Of Empire essay), the other one is 16th century Spain under Philip II.

“Nuts and bolts”

Industrial companies that may initially enjoy the cheap credit, use it to expand production facilities or other business assets, which then leads to excess production or excess supply of services and inevitably destroys profitability.   Decreasing profitability reduces investment yield, the Return On Investment (ROI) but it also serves to restrain the inflationary pressure fuelled by the financial expansion.   The reduced inflationary pressure due to collapsing profitability allows the central banks and governments to maintain the low inter-banking lending interest rate which in turn facilitates the issuance of even more credit, including borrowing by the governments for virtually limitless spending on themselves.

Risk management, CDS and leverage

The issuance of more and more credit to an expanding circle of corporate and other borrowers at a time of falling yields would have normally been stopped at some level by the rising risk premium preventing a further reduction of interest rates. Rising loan risk would have acted as a negative feedback preventing the currently observed unprecedented drop in interest rates and related bond yields. It would have ultimately prevented excessive credit generation.   The negative risk-mediated feedback has been sabotaged by the use of a special form of financial credit insurance called “Credit Default Swaps” (CDS).   CDS allowed the lending institutions to exceed the lending limits imposed by the normal risk avoidance standards (and by common sense) , by allowing them to profitably lend, giving very low and falling loan interest rates.   In this low interest rate environment, it was necessary to lower the required capital reserve for banks and financial institutions such as hedge funds in order to maintain the expected profitability. Until recently, this required capital reserve was decreed to be 1:11 (capital-to-total loans), which was recently further reduced by the “Basel 3” agreement to 1:30 bringing the world banks to similar “standards” as hedge funds which “enjoyed” the 30:1 leverage even before the 2008 crash (Leverage is the inverse of the capital requirement).

Positive feedback loop of destruction

Apart from destroying industrial profits, the excessive credit also creates bubbles in selected investment sectors such as stock, futures and bonds. Rising bond prices are further depressing the yields and interest rates which further accelerated the lending. This situation is described in science and engineering by the term “positive feedback loop”. This means that even a small input stimulus is amplified by the system and fed back to an input, amplifying itself further until the system reaches some very large deviation from an equilibrium, and saturates or the system breaks down.

Eventually financial companies flee the market where interest rates and Return On Investment (ROI) has been depressed, moving most of their investment capital off-shore to countries where the ROI is still high.   The process is repeated until all manufacturing economies end up eventually running unprofitable industries, subsidized at first by the investment capital influx, later by government subsidies to maintain employment and to prevent the paper assets backed by industry from crashing.   Subsidized manufacturing in poorer countries floods the world market with underpriced industrial goods allowing prices of industrial goods to remain stagnant (deflation) in spite of the rapid expansion of the financial system and money.
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I saw the future...

The last stage of this economic destruction is the breakdown of the unprofitable manufacturing, resources and agricultural sectors when the subsidies run out or when the employees refuse to work under the austere conditions imposed upon them by the profit squeeze. This process, like the credit growth itself, is also governed by the positive feedback law.   Once started, it will accelerate, fuelling itself like a cancer or fire. This will happen specifically, when food prices and the cost of living overtake the wages paid by unprofitable manufacturing companies causing industrial disruption due to strikes and closures, leading to further increases in the cost of living and so on.

The impact of this upon the developed countries that almost totally depend upon the subsidized under-priced production from the developing countries, will be equally severe. A decline of the subsidized imports of industrial and consumer goods will cause the supply chain to break down in the developed economies, leading to explosive inflation of all prices for manufactured goods, commodities, food and services. The ensuing inflation will put an upward pressure on interest rates which government will no longer be able to obfuscate or manipulate using financial techniques alone.

Aftermath

The inflation-induced jump in interest rates and yields will crash the bond market (bond values are inverse to their yields). Old bonds will drop in value destroying most of the pension funds and probably most of the financial institutions, given that it may trigger an avalanche of CDS claims (another positive feedback) which will accelerate the institutional and systemic collapse. At the same time, the new bonds will become very expensive for borrowers to issue, thereby derailing the “gravy train” enjoyed by governments and large corporations the world over. It may even make the refinancing or rollover of old debt impossible.

The break-down of the government bond market will cause currency exchange rates to vary wildly and may cause some currencies to crash and disappear, beginning with those countries that will default on their government bonds first and ending with probably all presently known paper currencies disappearing and being replaced by something else.

Science, technology and ideas (including business ideas) are unlimited.   Completely new industrial companies, technologies and services will be created, filling in the present business vacuum, using new-old forms of self-financing and capital-rising that are more robust and do not depend on large financial institutions and governments. This will happen in the countries that provide a legal framework effective in protecting private ownership and civil order yet not stifled by any excessive legislation or taxation.

The good news is that that which worked in the past, will work in the future, and what didn’t work in the past will not work in the future either.

Milk and 40 Countries Study

2011-09-04T21:56:00.001-04:00

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An old paper: "Differences in Coronary Mortality Can Be Explained by Differences in Cholesterol and Saturated Fat Intakes in 40 Countries but Not in France and Finland"

The study found that "...with comparable intakes of dietary cholesterol in France and Finland, the CHD mortality rate for men aged 55 to 59 was four times higher in Finland than in France."

In science, finding an exception to a theory always serves as an opportunity to revaluate the theory. Except with the "Fat And Cholesterol Theory" (of heart disease). Since Fat And Cholesterol Theory is treated as fact, finding exceptions to the theory has been used instead to revaluate the exceptions rather than the theory.

One reason that I would consider table 3 having higher chance of reflecting some possible real effects, is that it shows the countries of the similar culture, level of development and standard of living, where as the statistical correlations shown in table 1 are done over vastly dissimilar populations whose different level of development produces totally different set of health hazards that may completely mask any food influence. For example, most developed countries exhibit both high meat consumption and high CHD (but also higher longevity!). Similar statistics done within one country show typically completely different correlation, the most striking feature is typically a disapearance of correlation between Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) and fat, like for example in Malmo Study.

Correlations between Cholesterol and Saturated (fat) Index (CSI) or other consumption attributes and heart disease across Europe may or may not reflect causal connections. There may be many spurious factors possibly involved. However, if we assume, for the sake of discussion that the correlations in Table 3 may be reflecting some causal connections, then this presents us immediately with another "paradox" and not just about France but also involving other West European countries! Namely, that cholesterol and saturated fat cannot possibly explain the huge discrepancy of CHD stats between France, Germany (West), UK and Finland! One immediately notices that while CHD almost doubles from one country to the next in table 3, cholesterol and saturated fat consumption index is roughly the same! More specifically, the fact that butterfat remains also roughly the same (given typical low accuracy of the food statistics) - automatically invalidates the authors' conclusion published at the end (at least the part implicating "butterfat"). Comparison of other factors (except milk) between Germany and the UK also shows no clear trend, yet the CHD is vastly different!

Milk on the other hand, shows a clearly rising consumption trend in Table 3, that tracks the magnitude of the CHD! Not milk fat, not butter and not milk protein (cheese) - just milk! Why milk, what milk, is it real or spurious? If real, does it apply only to milk in Europe or in other parts of the world as well?
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Highest chocolate consumption = 37% reduction of CVD

2011-08-30T21:03:00.005-04:00

Molten chocolate and a piece of a chocolate bar (Wiki)

New meta study:

Chocolate consumption and cardiometabolic disorders: systematic review and meta-analysis

Quote:

Results
From 4576 references seven studies met the inclusion criteria (including 114 009 participants). None of the studies was a randomised trial, six were cohort studies, and one a cross sectional study. Large variation was observed between these seven studies for measurement of chocolate consumption, methods, and outcomes evaluated. Five of the seven studies reported a beneficial association between higher levels of chocolate consumption and the risk of cardiometabolic disorders. The highest levels of chocolate consumption were associated with a 37% reduction in cardiovascular disease (relative risk 0.63 (95% confidence interval 0.44 to 0.90)) and a 29% reduction in stroke compared with the lowest levels.

Conclusions
Based on observational evidence, levels of chocolate consumption seem to be associated with a substantial reduction in the risk of cardiometabolic disorders. ...

(Click to open large jpg)

A few questions to ponder:

- Is it a real effect or are we witnessing a coincidental correlation, for example the "wealth" effect?

- If real, which factor contributed the most? One can think of several possible such as (a) cardiovascular-protective effects of coconut and cocoa butter, (b) resveratrol, (c) substitution of more harmful snacks and drinks (soda, beer etc), or some other yet unknown factor present in chocolate?

- What is the consumption quantity or threshold to produce a given effect. (The study did not have the means to quantify chocolate consumption in physical units, due to the lack of published data).

- Since the cardioprotective effect is comparable if not higher than the hugely popular statin drugs (according to the mainstream but questionable studies), it would be interesting to notice how eagerly will medical science community rush to conduct more studies on this topic. I am not holding my breath.

-------------------------------
Added 15-Sep-2011

Chocolate 'as good for you as exercise'

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Fat disrupts sugar sensors in pancreas causing type 2 diabetes

2011-08-16T10:06:00.008-04:00

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That's why a diet simultanously high in fat and carbs is detrimental, but a diet high in either one and not both, is not!

See on BBC health:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-14503480

(Source: "Pathway to diabetes through attenuation of pancreatic beta cell glycosylation and glucose transport")

This is important finding that clears a lot of confusion. I used to answer countless of questions from diabetics (on other forums), the most frequent was this, paraphrasing:

"Why should I eat high fat diet if we know that it would increase my already high insulin resistance?"

This article is telling us that the answer to this is that it won't!

It will make pancreas stop reacting to blood glucose while you are eating fat AND carbohydrates at the same time. This won't matter you eat fat on its own with very little or no carbs! On the other hand, diabetic insulin resistance appears in this light to be a totally different phenomenon - related to body tissues and organs being permanently resistant to insulin that is already produced by pancreas and circulating throughout the body!

Will fat affect the tissue insulin resistance as well? Yes - probably by reducing it! As me and millions of other people who tried Dr. Jan Kwasniewski's Optimal Diet, have found!

We are probably dealing here with two opposing effects:

1) Detrimental effect of dietary fat upon pancreas preventing it from reacting to blood glucose
(Which matters if and only if one consumes significant amount of carbohydrates together and simultaneously with fat).

2) Positive long term effect of dietary fat upon body tissues and organs

Can a fatty meal impair cardiovascular health? Absolutely, since it can lead to hyperglycemia due to (1) if the meal is also high in carbs (I will pass that carrot cake, thank you...)

Can a high fat meal reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease (see this)? Absolutely! If it is low in carbohydrates!

This clarifies also another issue, namely Dr. Kwasniewski's claim that a diet with 35-45% fat by calories is the most detrimental to one's health (for adults). It makes a lot more sense in the light of this article. (Note: since a diet typically would contain 10-20% protein, therefore 35-45% fat means 35-55% carbohydrates, by calories).

Bottom line:
- Do not mix high carbohydrate diet with high fat nutrition!

------------ Update 30-Aug-2011 -------------------

Read this:

Fat and Diabetes: Bad Press, Good Paper, and the Reemergence of Our Good Friend Glutathione

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Warning MS C++ 2010 runtime upgrade breaks ATI graphics drivers! (off-topic)

2011-08-06T21:58:00.002-04:00

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I appologise for this quick off-topic warning post, but this info might save many of you from throwing out a perfectly good ATI Radeon 4xxx series that suddenly stopped working. I use ATI HD4670 in Win7 32bit, but this may apply also to other series of ATI cards.

A very recent upgrade of Microsoft C++ run-time library version 2011.0.30xx to 2011.0.40xx (Win7 32bit) breaks ATI Radeon graphics drivers. The symptoms are similar to when a graphic card breaks due to a hardware failure, that is screen goes suddenly black during a boot up, in high resolution large screen mode, while it may still be working when booted in the "safe mode".

I haven't tracked down yet where that .40 upgrade came from but I have determined it by multiple trial and errors beyond reasonable doubt that it is caused by the Windows 7 system run-time library incompatibility.

To fix the problem:

1) If your screen is already black, shut down, remove ATI Radeon graphics card, plug in some other card (Nvidia or something much older, even a standard VGA will do). Reboot.

2) Open Control Panel, Programs and Features - Check if you have MS C++ 2010.0.40xx Run-time installed. If yes then uninstall it.

3) Go to www.amd.com go to ATI Radeon downloads section, download and install "ATI Catalyst Center" (this will install all necessary graphics drivers for the ATI Radeon series) . I installed an older version (10.12) but the most recent one (11.7) should also work They all install MS C++ 2010.0.30 run-time library, as part of their overall installation process - verify the log that it was installed OK! If you forgot to uninstall version 40 then this step of "ATI Catalyst" installation will report a failure!

4) Shut down the PC, remove the old graphics card, reinstall ATI Radeon, restart.
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Animal protein and osteoporosis myth

2011-07-23T09:56:00.005-04:00

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This is a compilation of my past discussions (2007). Since this issue comes back so often, I decided to re-post it here, as the reference [or just to annoy] 8-:) .

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Myth 1: "Populations which consume a very high amount of dairy get more hip fractures than those which don't."

and

Myth 2: "It isn't only the calcium that comes in which is important but the calcium which is leached out due to high animal protein diets.

I am sorry to disappoint the true believers, but it is just the opposite! People who avoid animal protein believing that they are saving their bones are in fact increasing the risk of osteoporosis.

The following study found that women who consumed the most animal protein (+43%) had only one-fifth risk of hip fractures:

"Prospective study of dietary protein intake and risk of hip fracture in postmenopausal women"
by Ronald G Munger, James R Cerhan, and Brian C-H Chiu Am J Clin Nutr 1999;69:147-52.

Results: Forty-four cases of incident hip fractures were included in the analyses of 104 338 person-years (the number of subjects studied times the number of years of follow-up) of follow-up data. The risk of hip fracture was not related to intake of calcium or vitamin D, but was negatively associated with total protein intake. Animal rather than vegetable sources of protein appeared to account for this association. In a multivariate model with inclusion of age, body size, parity, smoking, alcohol intake, estrogen use, and physical activity, the relative risks of hip fracture decreased across increasing quartiles of intake of animal protein as follows: 1.00 (reference), 0.59 (95% CI: 0.26, 1.34), 0.63 (0.28, 1.42), and 0.31 (0.10, 0.93); P for trend = 0.037.

Conclusion: Intake of dietary protein, especially from animal sources, may be associated with a reduced incidence of hip fractures in postmenopausal women.

Table 4 of the study shows some really interesting data on the risk of hip fractures (from 6-th column). Namely, in addition to much lower (factor of 0.31) risk for the 43% higher consumption of animal protein, they found 1.9 times HIGHER risk associated with the 31% higher consumption of VEGETABLE protein!

Carbohydrate consumption turned out to have been a much bigger factor, perhaps the biggest factor:

23% higher consumption of carbohydrates was associated with 3 times higher rate of fractures!

If we recalculate (normalize) those risk factors per 100% (i.e. per doubling) increase of the consumption of each: total protein, animal protein, veg protein and carbohydrates, then we obtain the following:

Hip fracture risk correlation:

Total protein: - risk reduction 3.6 times
Animal protein:- risk reduction 4.5 times
Vegetable protein:- risk INCREASE 2.9 times
Carbohydrate:- risk INCREASE 4.9 times

In addition, women who experienced hip fractures (as opposed to those who didn't) consumed less animal fat, less saturated fat, less alcohol, had lower body mass index, had fewer pregnancies, smoked less, consumed more calcium, more vegetable fat and more vit D.

Heretic

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REFERENCES

Papers:

"Controlled High Meat Diets Do Not Affect Calcium Retention or Indices of Bone Status in Healthy Postmenopausal Women"

"Protein intake: effects on bone mineral density and the rate of bone loss in elderly women"

"Effect of Dietary Protein on Bone Loss in Elderly Men and Women: The Framingham Osteoporosis Study"

"Factors associated with calcium absorption efficiency in pre- and perimenopausal women"

Quote: "Women in the lowest tertile of the ratio of dietary fat to fiber had 19% lower fractional calcium absorption values than did women in the highest tertile of ratio of dietary fat to fiber"

Articles:

"Protein Saves Bone in Elders"

"New Data on Dietary Protein and Bone"

------ More references, update 1-Aug-2001 ---------------------------------------

This is based on the most recent blog article by Denise Minger quoting various peer-reviewed publications using China Study data. This is a MUST READ!

Some of the papers were co-authored by the well known expert vegan scientist Dr. T.Colin Campbell but unlike in his popular book, those papers are based on individual rather than county-averaged data. They also state completely opposite conclusion regarding heart disease, cancer and bone health which is quite remarkable for a senior mainstream academic scientist! The same man but two opposite views! Now to the subject of osteoporosis, bone density, calcium and diet:

* Dietary calcium and bone density among middle-aged and elderly women in China" by Ji-Fan Hu, Xi-He Zhao, Jian-Bin Jia, Banoo Parpia, and T. Colin Campbell.

Quote:

However, decline in bone mass after menopause for women in county WA (higher dairy calcium) was at a somewhat slower rate than for women in the nonpastoral areas (without dairy calcium).
...

Thus. differences in the rate of bone loss between these areas may be related to differences in dairy calcium intake, given that 34.6% ofealcium in county WA and none in the other nonpastoral areas was from milk. Indeed, dairy calcium was found to be more significantly correlated with bone mass than was nondairy calcium (Table 7), even though these analyses only included women with dairy food intake in counties YA and WA (n= 253). Nondairy calcium. in contrast, showed no association with bone variables after age and/or body weight were adjusted for (Table 7).

BMC and BMD at the distal and midradius were positively associated with consumption of milk (r = 0. 1 5-0.26, P [less than] 0.003) and with consumption of hard cheese and other dairy foods (r = 0.22-0.29, P [less than] 0.01) (data not shown). These results agree with those reported in other cross-sectional studies (35, 37). A similar association between daily milk intake and bone density was also reported by Yano et al (10) in Hawaiian Japanese males and females and by Shiehita (23) in 85 healthy Japanese males and females, whose calcium intakes were as low as in our study. Increasing calcium intake with calcium-rich foods (milk and cheese) was found to reduce bone loss in adolescent (34), osteoporotic (38), premenopausal (14), and lactating (39) women.

* Veganism and osteoporosis: A review of the current literature. "The findings gathered consistently support the hypothesis that vegans do have lower bone mineral density than their non-vegan counterparts."

* A Comparison of Bone Mass Measurements of Vegetarians and Omnivores. "In this review of 9 cross-sectional and 1 longitudinal study, little statistical significance between bone density and bone content was found between vegetarians and omnivores."

* Effect of vegetarian diets on bone mineral density: a Bayesian meta-analysis. "The results suggest that vegetarian diets, particularly vegan diets, are associated with lower BMD, but the magnitude of the association is clinically insignificant."

* Long-Term Vegetarian Diet and Bone Mineral Density in Postmenopausal Taiwanese Women. "Long-term practitioners of vegan vegetarian were found to be at a higher risk of exceeding lumbar spine fracture threshold … and of being classified as having osteopenia of the femoral neck."

The rest of Denise article quotes more papers co-authored by T.C.Campbell, that conclude a positive protective role of dairy, meat and fish rich diets against cancer, heart disease and other disease in China. Read it all!

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Vegans, dietary fat and Alzheimer's

2011-07-09T12:22:00.005-04:00

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I like browsing through some vegan discussion groups looking at the papers, publications and studies they use to support their belief system. McDougall's forum is particularly useful because of their tenacity in trying to use science to justify themselves. Experience taught me that such studies are always ambivalent and very often prove a completely opposite views to those of the vegan believers who posted them.

The following study from 2003, did not disappoint me:

Dietary fats and the risk of incident Alzheimer disease.

The abstract looked very foreboding, for example, quote:

Persons in the upper fifth of saturated-fat intake had 2.2 times the risk of incident Alzheimer disease compared with persons in the lowest fifth

Not all is lost fortunately, because of the widely known practice in the medical "science" to print only the politically correct (i.e. false) information in the abstracts while hiding the true albeit inconvenient facts in the full text.

The facts are that the saturated fat data and most of the other results are generally not statistically significant!

The facts are that even when one takes the trend line across saturated fat quintiles and makes it appear statistically more significant than an individual datum (the so-called "p value for the trend") - the resulting p is still much greater than 0.05 and thus is still not statistically significant! Best illustration is the following (upper) portion of the Table 3:

The facts are that if you take the most basic age-adjusted only data (look at the first row called "Age-adjusted+"), there is no clear trend at all since the middle and the second highest saturated fat columns (quintiles) have exactly the same Alzheimer's risk as the lowest reference quintile of saturated fat! The second and the third row (headed by "Multivariable" and "Multivariable... other fats") above are the more processed data, that seem to exhibit a weak rising trend, albeit also not statistically significant! One shall always keep in mind that multivariable-corrected trends are dependent upon some specific model-dependent assumptions that may or may not be correct.

It gets more intereseting as one reads down the table. If one takes the above discussed saturated results on faith, beliving that the weak statistics may be reflecting some real underlying trend rather than being some artefacts of the data gathering and processing methodology (as I suspect is the case), then one should also take a notice and state that the rest of the data "proves" (also not statistically significanly) that the total fat consumption, dietary cholesterol intake, animal fat consumption and vegetable fat consumption all seem either not to correlate or to correlate NEGATIVELY (protectively) with the Alzheimer's risk! See the lower portion of the Table 3:

For example, the total fat consumption seems to be protective against Alzheimer's! The second lowest and the middle quintile in consumption of animal produce (indicated by dietary cholesterol!) also have higher Alzheimer's risk than the two highest quintiles! Animal fat consumption seems to show no correlation to Alzheimer - the trend curve is pretty flat except the third row ("Multivariable adjusted for vegetable fats and trans-fats") which shows a weak NEGATIVE (i.e. protective) trend!

Last but not least the bottom group Vegetable fats shows the strongest correlation in the whole study. That correlation is strongly NEGATIVE (protective), that is the more vegatable fat the less Alzheimer's cases! In fact that result, after "Multivariable adjusted for vegetable fats and trans-fats" - is the only one, alongside the omega-6 fat result ( which is basically its subset) that does exhibit a statistically significant trend!

Unfortunately for those who believe in the low fat dogma, this is not a good news! Especially when compared with other sources, see for example this and that.
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Do statins or low fat diets cause osteoporosis?

2011-07-07T23:19:00.005-04:00

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New study: "Association Between Myocardial Infarction and Fractures: An Emerging Phenomenon."

Most interesting is this, quote:

...substantial temporal variations were noted (
1979 to 1989: hazard ratio, 0.81 ...
1990 to 1999: hazard ratio, 1.47 ...
2000 to 2006: hazard ratio, 1.73 ...
...
Trends were similar regardless of age, sex or fracture site. Conversely, the overall hazard ratio for death in MI cases versus controls did not change materially...

The only obvious factor that was different in the first decade (blue - less osteoporosis following a MI event) as opposed to the second and third decade of the study (red - more osteoporosis!) is the common usage of statin drugs! Perhaps a popularity of the low fat high carbohydrate diets in treating MI patients (the so-called AHA diet) may be another factor distinguishing the red from the blue decades.

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Update 16-July-2011

Another recent study found on Dr.McDougall forum, linking bone underdevelopment with malnutrition, in this case a lack of dairy products:

Thin Bones Seen In Boys with Autism and Autism Spectrum Disorder

Quotes:

The boys in the study who were on a casein-free [READ DAIRY-FREE (added by H.)] diet had the thinnest bones. In fact, the 9 boys who were on a casein-free diet had bones that were 20 percent thinner than normal for children their age. Boys who were not on a casein-free diet showed a 10 percent decrease in bone thickness when compared to boys with normal bone development.

The study authors wrote that bone development of children on casein-free diets should be monitored very carefully. They noted that studies of casein-free diets had not proven the diets to be effective in treating the symptoms of autism or ASD.

As a side note from my own experience. It reminds me that a nurse examining children at my school in the Eastern Europe, 1960-ties (I was around 12) told us that many, about a half had unusually thin but long bones in their hands and different elbow joints, as compared with the medical reference books that she used. Those children had normal food intake, were rather well fed. I always wondered what was causing the difference and that the same factor affecting bone development may have also affected the risk of autism! What was that factor? We didn't eat breakfast cereals nor drank pop. We ate a high carb medium fat diet not much different from that of the 1930-ties or before. Definitely more sugar - sugar became very cheap in the 1960-ties, and margarine became the new "health" "food" of the day plus vegetable oils became a popular cooking fat substitute in the 1970-ties. Sugar was very expensive before WWII in Poland due to special sugar tax, then became completely unavailable during German occupation 1939-1945 and then became cheap afterwards. What else other than sugar could have done the damage?

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The end of an era

2011-07-03T09:59:00.007-04:00

Drawn by Cecilia Bleszynski

The following Washington Post article "Final NASA shuttle mission clouded by rancor" should have had a different headline. Imagine this:

SIMIAN-SAPIENS ELITES ARE DESTROYING THE HOMO-SAPIENS CIVILIZATION!
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Vitamin K2 Reduces Heart Disease by 57 Percent

2011-07-02T22:32:00.001-04:00

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Interesting links, some new some old. Enjoy!

From Natural Health Digest and News

Quote:

Researchers concluded that vitamin K1 had little effect on cardiovacular health, but vitamin K2 dramatically reduced it.
How do you get vitamin K2 into your diet? Vitamin K2 is found largely in meats and eggs.

Also cheese, organ meat, natto. See also my old posts on vitamin K2 related topics

Other interesting links gathered from a vegan forum (thank you Dr. Mc Dougall):

Sci Am: "Carbs against Cardio..." (refresher of an older post)

"Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Do Not Cause Coronary Heart Disease" by Dr. Paul J. Rosch

Quote:

4. No association between cholesterol levels and the severity or extent of atherosclerosis has ever been found in postmortem studies of the general population. No clinical or imaging study has found any relation between the degree of cholesterol lowering and improvement.

In one angiography study, in which blood cholesterol had been reduced by more than 25% in 24 patients, atherosclerosis was increased in 18 and unchanged in eight. Cholesterol rose in 12 other patients but only 4 showed an increase in atherosclerosis. A Mayo Clinic study similarly found that in all patients whose cholesterols had decreased by more than 60, there was a significant increase in coronary atherosclerosis.
...
6. The huge and lengthy MRFIT study (Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial) was designed to prove the links between diet, cholesterol, and other Framingham risk factors with heart disease. Cholesterol consumption was cut by 42 percent, and saturated fat consumption by 28 percent and on long-term follow-up, those adhering to this dietary fat restriction had slightly lower coronary heart disease death rates.

However, this benefit was far outweighed by significantly increased total mortality rates, especially from hemorrhagic stroke, cancer, suicide, accidents and violence. The risk of dying from a cerebral hemorrhage was 500% greater in those with low cholesterol compared to those with high levels. In most other studies, the incidence of stroke was higher in those who ate less saturated fat.

70g carbs per day diet reverses diabetes in 2 months!

2011-06-25T11:16:00.002-04:00

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An apparently ketogenic diet consisting of ~70g of carbohydrates/day and 49g protein/day reversed type 2 diabetes in 11 patients. During the 8 week course of the study, the patients' metabolic energy was derived primarily from fat, that is: 13.4g/day of dietary fat plus an average of 227g of body fat consumed in a day. (They lost an average of 12.7kg of body fat per person, over 8 weeks!)

Here is the study Diabetologia DOI 10.1007/s00125-011-2204-7

Title: "Reversal of type 2 diabetes: normalisation of beta cell function in association with decreased pancreas and liver triacylglycerol", E. L. Lim, K. G. Hollingsworth, B. S. Aribisala, M. J. Chen, J. C. Mathers, R. Taylor

(Thanks Dav0 for alerting me to this study!)
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Gorillas stay lean by following Atkins

2011-06-23T19:17:00.001-04:00

Mountain gorilla (from wiki )

An article has just appeared in the Irish Times (under the above title - love the title! ).

Quote:

Scientist David Raubenheimer studied gorillas in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, who seasonally gorge on protein to meet their needs for carbohydrates and fats.Prof Raubenheimer noticed the primates were doing the opposite of what many overweight humans do in over-eating carbohydrates and fats to attain enough protein. His study, published in the latest issue of the journal Biology Letters, found gorillas ate a high protein diet, supplemented with fruits.

Interestingly, gorilla's diet ranges between 19% to 30% in PROTEIN! I wonder what would some well known diet promoting culprits recommending only 10%, say about that?!
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It's the sugar, stupid!

2011-06-11T23:56:00.001-04:00

Sugar (from Wiki)

John Yudkin - High intake of sucrose and heart attacks(*)

Quote:

In spite of these difficulties, such studies have already shown that sucrose, in proportions within the range found in current human dietaries, produces an increase in plasma lipids, uric acid, insulin and cortisol; abnormalities in platelet behavior; reduction in glucose tolerance; tissue resistance to insulin; damage to the liver and the kidney, and an increase in lipid in the aorta.

Potential role of sugar (fructose) in the epidemic of hypertension, obesity and the metabolic syndrome, diabetes, kidney disease, and cardiovascular disease, by Johnson et al.

Quote:

It is our opinion that the potential mechanisms underlying the epidemic should be carefully reappraised. On the basis of both he experimental studies performed in our laboratories and an extensive review of the literature, we revisit an old hypothesis hat a simple dietary substance may have a significant role in driving the epidemic. Interestingly, reappraising the role of sugar nd its influence in the development of cardiorenal disease may lead to a new understanding of why certain populations, such as African Americans, Native Americans, Maori, and Australian Aborigines, are at greater risk of developing the disease. Similar to the relation between high intakes of salt or protein and the risk of developing kidney disease or to the relation between a high-fat diet and the atherosclerotic phenotype, we propose that sugars containing fructose may play a major role in the development of hypertension, obesity, and the metabolic syndrome and in the subsequent development of kidney disease. Although physical inactivity and overeating are major contributors to the obesity epidemic, we present evidence that fructose may be the "caries" to the epidemic’s root.

...

One unique aspect of fructose is that it is the only sugar that raises uric acid concentrations, and this can be shown in both humans (56) and rodents (57). Fructose enters hepatocytes and other cells (including tubular cells, adipocytes, and intestinal epithelial cells), where it is completely metabolized by fructokinase with the consumption of ATP; unlike in glucose metabolism, there is no negative regulatory mechanism to prevent the depletion of ATP. As a consequence, lactic acid and uric acid are generated in the process, and uric acid concentrations may rise by 1–4 mg/dL after the ingestion of a large fructose-based meal (58). Although the rise in uric acid concentrations has historically been viewed as simply a potential risk factor for inducing gout, recent studies suggest that this may be a key mechanism to explain how fructose causes cardiovascular disease. In addition, it also provides a mechanism to explain why rodents are relatively resistant to the effects of fructose (see below).

FRUCTOSE-INDUCED HYPERURICEMIA AS A MECHANISM FOR CARDIORENAL DISEASE

Nakagawa et al (51) recently showed in experimental animals that lowering uric acid concentrations could largely prevent features of the metabolic syndrome induced by fructose, including weight gain, hypertriacylglycerolemia, hyperinsulinemia and in-
sulin resistance, and hypertension. The protective effect of lowering uric acid concentrations on the development of the metabolic syndrome was shown regardless of whether the uric acid concentrations were lowered by using a xanthine oxidase inhibitor or a uricosuric agent (51). These studies were surprising, because most authorities had considered uric acid to be either biologically inert or an important antioxidant in the plasma (59). However, uric acid was found to have numerous deleterious biologic functions. For example, uric acid stimulates both vascular smooth muscle cell proliferation and the release of chemotactic and inflammatory substances (60–62), induces monocyte chemotaxis (63), inhibits endothelial cell proliferation andmigration (64, 65), and causes oxidative stress in adipocytes, which results in the impaired secretion of adiponectin (66).

In animals, the effect of elevated uric acid concentrations is even more pronounced. For example, mildly hyperuricemic rats develop hypertension because of the inhibition of nitric oxide synthase in themacula densa, the stimulation of intrarenal renin, and a reduction in endothelial nitric oxide bioavailability (67). Over time, hyperuricemic rats develop renal arteriosclerosis that then causes the animals to develop a salt-sensitive form of hypertension.
...

WHY ARE AFRICAN AMERICANS SUSCEPTIBLE TO CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE?

It is well known that African Americans have higher rates of obesity, hypertension, diabetes, kidney disease, and heart disease. ... Recent studies also have documented that the sugar intake of African Americans is greater than that of whites (110, 111). Similar high sugar intakes were noted in studies of Australian Aborigines and Samoans living in New Zealand (112,113). Furthermore, it is known that African Americans have higher concentrations of uric acid (114); in the African American Study of Hypertension and Kidney Disease, the average uric acid concentration was 8.3 mg/dL (115).

...

If the hypothesis is correct that fructose has a role in the epidemic of cardiovascular disease, then a number of predictions should arise from future studies. First, fructose intake will be a risk factor for hypertension, insulin resistance, hypertriacylglycerolemia, obesity, type 2 diabetes, preeclampsia, chronic kidney disease, stroke, cardiovascular disease, and mortality. Second, reducing uric acid in patients with uric acid concentrations [greater than] 6.0 mg/dL will improve endothelial dysfunction, decrease systemic vascular resistance, lower blood pressure, lower triacylglycerol concentrations, improve body weight, lower the risk of the progression of renal disease, and reduce cardiovascular disease risk. Third, low-fructose diets coupled with mild purine restriction will improve weight and reduce cardiovascular disease risk. Fourth, fructokinase will be identified as a key enzyme mediating the cardiorenal disease syndrome; genetic polymorphisms will be associated with cardiovascular disease risk, and blocking the enzyme will provide a novel way to prevent cardiorenal disease. Clearly, much more work needs to be done to prove or disprove this hypothesis.

*) Found that through Mark's blog - The Definitive Guide to Saturated Fat
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Low-level ionising radiation protects against cancer!

2011-04-30T16:12:00.002-04:00

.

Quote:

The projections of thousands of late cancer deaths based on LNT, are in conflict with observations that in comparison with general population of Russia, a 15% to 30% deficit of solid cancer mortality was found among the Russian emergency workers, and a 5% deficit solid cancer incidence among the population of most contaminated areas.

Paper :
Observations on the Chernobyl Disaster and LNT. (thanks Peter for pointing it out)

LNT stands for "Linear Non-Threshold" hypothesis that postulates that no matter how low level of radiation, its harmful effects accumulate and add up over time.

This and other papers posted in this blog ( Gamma radiation protects against cancer, in low doses seems to indicate that this theory is dead.
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Ketogenic diet reverses kidney failure caused by sugar

2011-04-24T01:02:00.003-04:00

... in diabetic mice!

Chinese braised pork belly

New study was just reported on the BBC Health: Diet 'can reverse kidney failure' in mice with diabetes

Quote:

A controlled diet high in fat and low in carbohydrate can repair kidney damage in diabetic mice, according to US scientists. The study, published in journal PLoS ONE, showed a "ketogenic diet" could reverse damage caused to tubes in the kidneys by too much sugar in the blood. ... After eight weeks the researchers noted that kidney damage was reversed. Professor Charles Mobbs, who led the research at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, said: "Our study is the first to show that a dietary intervention alone is enough to reverse this serious complication of diabetes.

The study:

Reversal of Diabetic Nephropathy by a Ketogenic Diet

Quote:

In mouse models for both Type 1 (Akita) and Type 2 (db/db) diabetes, diabetic nephropathy (as indicated by albuminuria) was allowed to develop, then half the mice were switched to a ketogenic diet. After 8 weeks on the diet, mice were sacrificed to assess gene expression and histology. Diabetic nephropathy, as indicated by albumin/creatinine ratios as well as expression of stress-induced genes, was completely reversed by 2 months maintenance on a ketogenic diet. However, histological evidence of nephropathy was only partly reversed. These studies demonstrate that diabetic nephropathy can be reversed by a relatively simple dietary intervention. Whether reduced glucose metabolism mediates the protective effects of the ketogenic diet remains to be determined.

Let's look at this detail, quote:

None of the conditions influenced blood pH, although there was a non-significant trend toward reduced blood pH (i.e., acidification) in diabetic mice, and the ketogenic diet reversed this trend.

In other words:

-- KETOGENIC DIET REVERSED DIABETIC ACIDIFICATION! --

Which totally undermines all the bullshit that the mainstream medical authorities together with vegetarian promoters used to hurl against Atkins! Furthermore:

-- KETONE PROTECTS AGAINST GLUCOSE TOXICITY AND AGAINST OXIDATIVE STRESS --

As the authors explain, quote:

The ketone 3-OHB is cytoprotective
To further assess potential mechanisms mediating the protective effects of the ketogenic diet, and since glucose toxicity in diabetes is thought to be mediated by glucose-induced oxidative stress, we assessed if the ketone 3-OHB would protect cells from oxidative stress enhanced by either high or low glucose. As shown in Figure 6, 3-OHB produced a dose-responsive cytoprotective effect at both elevated and reduced glucose.

The authors also concluded that:

-- REDUCTION OF GLUCOSE METABOLISM MAY BE GENERALLY BENEFICIAL --

Quote:

...we hypothesize that at least part of the restorative effect was mediated by reduction of glucose metabolism. This hypothesis is supported by several lines of evidence. First, the ketogenic diet appears to reduce the frequency of epileptic seizures by reducing glucose metabolism [11], [12]. Second, molecular responses to the ketogenic diet indicates a re-routing of cellular metabolism away from glucose utilization and toward the use of alternative fuels [13], [14]. Finally, we have shown that ketone 3-OHB blocks molecular effects of glucose [9]. We therefore hypothesize that the ketogenic diet reverses diabetic nephropathy by raising blood levels of 3-OHB which subsequently reduce glucose metabolism in at least some tissues including kidney. Since ketones and the ketogenic diet are neuroprotective in a wide range of conditions [31], a phenomenon we have corroborated in the present study (Figure 6), it seems highly likely that the ketogenic diet will be protective in diabetic neuropathy and possibly retinopathy as well.

Fatty meal may reduce heart risk

2011-04-15T22:01:00.006-04:00

(Beefsteak Tartare, wiki)

The findings were presented April 14 2011 at the 2011 Experimental Biology meeting in Washington DC.

Quoting after "Fatty splurge may reduce heart risk" article publishd yesterday in the Irish "Indo".

The surprising findings show that a short saturated fat "splurge" can actually reduce damage to the heart. Scientists who conducted the research in mice are still trying to explain the effect. But they believe it could have important implications for human health, possibly leading to a way to "pre-treat" people at high risk of heart attacks. Previous studies have found that certain patients with high cholesterol levels are more likely survive heart attacks than those with lower levels. Yet the idea that fatty food can reduce injury from heart attacks is completely at odds with general thinking about diet and heart health.

"at odds", yeah right...

Heretic
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Value fulfillment and ‘specism’

2011-03-29T00:02:00.003-04:00

We are postulating that there are two species of consciousness, as : Wolves and Dogs are of the same species, with the Alsatian and the Wolf barely distinguishable from each other. Yet each exhibits consciousness appropriate to its kind to fulfill its inherent values. The difference manifests itself in their behavior – they have a different consciousness (or “software”).

Value Fulfillment and Collectivists (They), and Individualists (Us)

Humans have also stratified into two species of consciousness. They are Collectivists (i.e. Baby Boomers ) whose consciousness dictates that they exist within a social network which they create by forging strategic friendships, partnerships and alliances, and that they climb up their power ladder to attain the higher positions within their structure. Their “success” is not contingent on any actual production of tools, goods, products or services, or on the actual creation of art or scientific progress. Their success is measured by their status on the corporate ladder. Their titles designate their merit – and their merit reflects their social climbing skills, and, incontrovertibly, their salaries and benefits. Their worth is in “being”.
The Individualists’ worth is in “doing”. Often stigmatized as social outcasts, they work, often unrecognized, un-applauded and underpaid, to follow their ideals, to produce the dies for tools, designs for goods, products, services. They spend lonely years creating sculptures, music, or canvasses or proving a new scientific theory. Their worth is in “doing”.
We refer to the collectivist consciousness as “simian” in that it may be viewed as a regression to our ancestral primate life in a group or herd, in a “paradise” where nature produced the fruits/food, and work did not matter, but obedience to social order did, If the social hierarchy was disobeyed, the rebels were expelled from “paradise” and were condemned to an exile where they had to work for their living….. “Thou shalt labour…etc.” Further allegory might be drawn from the need for a “Saviour” to lead these unfortunates back to their paradise. For the simians, being expelled from the social order and having to work was a punishment. For the Individualist, it was – and still is - an opportunity for self-fulfillment and enrichment.

Neither the simian consciousness, nor the individualist consciousness, though, should be rejected out of hand, because both species have their validity. The collectivists are inherently better at keeping society cohesive and functioning. That said, the individualists do give them headaches : The insistence of the individualists to follow through on their curiosity and also for following through with their inventions tends to disrupt the comfort level of the older and more inflexible managers. Just because the simians are better at playing politics, forging alliances and working out compromises does not mean they are all cold-blooded, emotionless beings. Neither can all individualists be classified as caring, either.

Seeking Perfection

One wonders if there is any way of explaining the social pathologies that Ayn Rand was describing in her books, other than assuming that her looters and moochers were dysfunctional and pathological humans? Is there some way of explaining their failures while acknowledging that they really are perfect in their existing roles just as they are ?

”Seeking Perfection” was an idea that did not make sense to us, and seemed irrelevant. Until now.

If one entertains theories pertaining to nature and living things, but has to resort to pathologies in order to explain certain behaviours, then most likely the theories are wrong ! "Simian” theory removes the idea of social pathologies from Ayn Rand’s model. “They are perfect the way they are, so are we !” They are just different and happened to live outside of their natural environment. Therefore they have no choice but to rely on the work of gifted individuals, their intelligence, skills and creativity to keep both species of consciousness alive. As an example, had the decision-making politicians consulted with engineers at the time Japan was buying its Fukushima reactors from G.E., they would not have bought them.

Another positive aspect of letting both species of consciousness live together is that it seems conducive to scientific progress – with research being conducted by free-spirited, curious people living in settled, stable and prosperous societies – in other words by individualists living among collectivists.

The collectivists’ best hope of survival is to embrace their antitheses, the creative individualists, rather than purging them from corporate management. There really is no hope of restoring their natural habitat (“paradise”), where they survived on their own.

---------------
Stan (Heretic), based on Dozent's theory (Stanley P.), edited by Margo the Heretic (Margo W.)
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US gov nationalizing J&J Tylenol division!

2011-03-12T11:07:00.000-05:00

.
Johnson & Johnson's drug problem
U.S. takes over three Tylenol plants

- what are they trying to cover-up???

Does autism mean being more human?

2011-02-07T22:03:00.007-05:00

I was threatening to write on this topic under my November post "Lack of social skills made us human". See also, or I should say - especially Emily Deans, M.D. comment!.
Here we go.

It is about people with Aspergers' or mild Autism working in business environment (software consultancy), intermingling with the "normal" office employees and the ensuing culture clash.

An interview with Thorkil Sonne on CBC Radio 1 (Canadian) a couple of months ago, has sparked my interest in this as around the same time I started researching some issue involving anthropology and society. The following article from The Independent titled "Better, faster... and no office politics: the company with the autistic specialists" is fairly close to what was told on Sonne's radio interview. Let me quote:

I know lots of companies with noisy, chaotic, open-plan offices, where the work is like fire-fighting most of the time, and people from Specialisterne wouldn’t be able to work there. That said, the environment they need is the kind of environment we should all be working in anyway.”

Remarkably, about 70 per cent of Specialisterne’s employees are stationed in client premises. I asked Sonne how easy it is for them to fit in with other working environments. “We create virtual Specialisterne environments in our clients’ offices. Everyone who will be in contact with our consultants is briefed about the conditions they require. They have to be nice to our people, avoid stressing them. In Denmark, we use a lot of irony and sarcasm, but people with autism can’t decode that. We make sure that the clients know how important it is to be direct, to outline tasks precisely and to stick to routines, particularly if any queries arise.”

“That’s how you avoid an ‘I only fly with Qantas’ freak-out?” I blurt. “Yes,” says Sonne. “We’ve never had a ‘freak-out’. In fact, saying what you mean, meaning what you say, being nice, avoiding stress are all good things in general for companies to take on board. Many have said to us that having one of our consultants has softened the atmosphere.”

It must actually be a relief to work with colleagues for whom office politics, backbiting and bitchiness are anathema. “Yes, they are a happy and loyal group, no one ever talks badly about anyone else. It’s nice to work with people who are honest, without filters. In fact I am working on a new management technique based on our experience with working conditions that are more open and direct.”
...

You do have to have the right environment for people with Asperger’s to function – there needs to be an acceptance that I am special, that I might not work regular hours, that I might have down periods – but if you have that in place, we can do any job.”

Most Specialisterne employees tend to work 20- to 25-hour weeks, but Jacobsen has brought his hours up to 35. “You really blossom here. I see it with so many Aspergerians who join the company and get proper training. I have a lot of friends at the company now, and we socialise and go out together in town. We know we all have that twist.”
...
Of course, some experts have identified autistic traits in people such as Mozart, Da Vinci, Newton, Einstein. If they were alive today, perhaps they would be recognised as having Asperger’s, and look at what they achieved. Unfortunately, there is such an emphasis on being a team player and social skills in the workplace that there is still this resistance.
...

Comments? We should draw our own conclusions, but I could not help noticing that the attributes of the corporate culture that the Specialisterne Aspergers' people found unbearable are the same that _I_ find unbearable! They are the same attributes and habits that most of my fellow engineers find unbearable!

More articles, links and comments on the subject of corporate culture, "baby boomers'" etc., can be found under "anthropology" search term .

Obesity + high carb diet = liver disease!

2011-02-06T22:04:00.004-05:00

.
High carbohydrate diet was associated with 7 times HIGHER risk of steatosis among morbidly obese bariatric surgery patients, while high fat correlated with 6 times LOWER risk, according to the following study:

Dietary composition and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.

Quotes from the abstract:

... all patients underwent a preoperative dietary evaluation using a standardized 24-hr food recall. Food intake was evaluated for total calories and macronutrients and compared to liver histopathology from biopsies routinely obtained during surgery. Associations with the severity of steatosis [FATTY LIVER DISEASE] and the presence of inflammation or fibrosis were assessed separately using chi-square for categorical variables and ANOVA for continuous variables. ... There were no significant associations between either total caloric intake or protein intake and either steatosis, fibrosis, or inflammation. However, higher CHO [CARBOHYDRATES] intake was associated with significantly higher odds of inflammation, while higher fat intake was associated with significantly lower odds of inflammation. In conclusion, present dietary recommendations may worsen NAFLD [NON-ALCOHOLIC FATTY LIVER DISEASE] histopathology.

Unfortunately, the full text is not available but this article provides more interesting details:

"Compared with patients with the lowest carbohydrate intake, a high-carbohydrate diet was associated with an odds ratio of 7.0 (p = 0.02) for liver inflammation. A high fat diet appeared to be protective, with those in the highest fat intake group having an OR of 0.17 (p = 0.009). Dr. Clark noted that the study appears to support diets such as the Atkins Diet, but she declined(*) to make a recommendation."

*) see this ancient text ...
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Low-energy diets render motor neurons vulnerable to degeneration

2011-01-25T20:40:00.005-05:00

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This paper is a bit old but I am posting it to keep it in focus for a discussion. Please notice that low fat vegan diets often tend to be "low energy"!

Mattson MP, Cutler RG, Camandola S. Energy intake and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Neuromolecular Med. 2007;9(1):17-20

Abstract

Roy Walford, a physician and scientist who pioneered research on the anti-aging effects of caloric restriction and subjected himself to a low-energy diet, recently died from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Information from his case, epidemiological findings, and recent controlled studies in mouse models of ALS suggest that low-energy diets might render motor neurons vulnerable to degeneration, whereas high-energy diets are ameliorative. This contrasts with the effects of low-energy diets on various neuronal populations in the brain that respond adaptively, activating pathways that promote plasticity and resistance to disease. One reason that motor neurons might be selectively vulnerable to low-energy diets is that they are unable to engage neuroprotective responses to energetic stress response involving the protein chaperones, such as, heat-shock protein-70 [*].

--------------------------

*) In addition to that, ketone bodies (often very low on low-energy diets) would have been protective against neural damage caused by the stress response, see:
Ketone bodies protect neurons from stress hormone-induced damage

------- added 28/01 -------------------

This video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-PzhyTlODc illustrates what kind of diet did Dr. Walford followed for about 10 years before his death (see around 7m into video).

Vegan promoter warns vegans against Parkinson's!

2011-01-25T20:15:00.004-05:00

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This is 2 years old, I just rediscovered it in my heretical files. Worth reading.

-------------------

From Dr. Fuhrman's latest e-mail [around Apr 02, 2009] :

Leaders of the Vegan Movement Develop Parkinson's: Case Studies

Herbert Shelton (1895 - 1985) a naturopath and chiropractor and the influential founder of the American Natural Hygiene Society and Nature Cure movement in America and prolific health writer advocated a natural food vegetarian diet of mostly raw fruits, vegetables and nuts. I read all of his highly motivating books, newsletters and writings in my teens. He lived in Texas, was physically fit, grew lots of his own food and ate carefully and fasted periodically. Of course he did not get cancer, he did not get heart disease, but he died of Parkinson's disease and was so severely affected by the age of 78 that even walking was difficult. In 1973 when I met him he was already severely hunched over and had a difficult time walking and caring for himself. Though he lived many years with this significant disability, the quality of his later years was extremely poor.

Prominent Vegetarian and Health Advocate - this leader in the natural health movement and a personal friend to me also suffered from and eventually died from a fall related to his Parkinson's disease. During his young adult life he embarked on the path of healthy living and vegetarianism. A follower of Shelton's works, he operated a large health food store, one of the first to sell organic fruits and vegetables in America; he became a leader in the health food industry. Of course he was not at risk of cancer or heart disease with his excellent diet, but he developed Parkinson's which limited the quality of his later years.

When he was developing his Parkinsonian tremors, I ordered blood tests and was shocked to see his blood results showing almost a zero DHA [*] level on his fatty acid test, in spite of adequate ALA consumption from nuts and seeds eaten daily. I had never seen a DHA level that low before. Since that time I have drawn DHA blood levels on other patients with Parkinson's and also found very low DHA levels.
Was it a coincidence, that these leaders in the natural food, vegetarian movement, who ate a very healthy vegan diet and no junk food would both develop Parkinson's? I thought to myself--could it be that deficiencies in DHA predispose one to Parkinson's? Do men have worse ability to convert short chain omega-3 into long chain DHA? Is that why Parkinson's affects more men than women? Is there evidence to suggest that DHA deficiencies lead to later life neurologic problems? Are there primate studies to show DHA deficiencies in monkeys leads to Parkinson's? The answer to all of these questions is a resounding, yes.
....
[read further on http://www.drmcdougall.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=11105 ]

-----------------------

*) DHA - Docosahexanoic acid, omega-3 type of fat commonly present in animal produce, especially in brain, spinal cord, nerves and egg yolks. This type of fat is generally not present in plant based products, with very few exceptions (some algae).

In addition, a high carb nutrition would probably offer less natural protection against neuro degenerative diseases because of low level of ketone bodies. For example non-ketogenic diet would be less protective against stress-induced neural damage, see: Ketone bodies protect neurons from stress hormone-induced damage
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46% sugar diet causes breast cancer...

2011-01-22T12:43:00.004-05:00

Underfunded Scientists Force Lipstick-Covered Rat With Cancer To Run Through Maze

... in mice, as medical "scientists" have recently discovered in this study. Strangely, that is not what they officially concluded, that's why I put the word in quotes! The lethal mice diet consisted of 46% of sugar (31% sucrose + 10% maltodextrin + 5% dextrin), 21% of milk fat and 19% of casein. Read more about that in this post by Denise Minger.

Heretic

---------------------------------

"... a flea without legs cannot jump when told, because it cannot hear - concluded the leading biologist Professor Lysenko" (old Soviet joke)

"You need a computer to obfuscate things properly but to really foul things up you need a scientist!" (anonymous, 1960-ties)

The Myths of Losing Weight

2011-01-22T00:09:00.001-05:00

(From Wiki)

Short Reader's Digest interview with Gary Taubes, for people who like "executive" summaries.

Another "executive" summary by Eric Westman: Limit Your Carbs and Lose Weight.

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Criminals

2011-01-18T20:57:00.000-05:00

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This is important article, enjoy!

ECB Allows Irish Central Bank to Counterfeit 51 Billion Euros

Low fat diets could increase heart disease risk...

2011-01-07T20:27:00.003-05:00

... say nutrition experts.

Home-made(*) pork lard. Obviously, it has to be good!

Saw this article link on THE SPARK OF REASON blog (thanks!).

The article describes a symposium called "The Great Fat Debate: Is There Validity In the Age-Old Dietary Guidance?" at the American Dietetic Association’s (ADA) Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo. It would have been a usual boring scientific waffle following a vacuous hedge-all-bets type of philosophy, had it not been for some quotes of Dr. Walter Willett's presentation. He is one of the few prominent medical officials (director) not following the "speak but say nothing" strategy. At least not since a couple of years ago.

Quotes (of Dr.W.Willett):

"If anything, the literature shows a slight advantage of the high fat diet," he said. "The focus on fat in dietary guidelines has been a massive distraction. ... We should remove total fat from nutrition facts panels on the back of packs."

He added that while the pervasive dietary guidance given to consumers has been to eat fats sparingly, to load up on starch and eat non-fat products, "the food industry quickly realized sugar was cheaper than fat and laughed all the way to the bank."

And assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School Dr. Mozaffarian:

... agreed with the other speakers about a lack of evidence linking total fat consumption and cardiovascular disease risk.

___________________
Footnote:

*) Chop pork belly into finger-sized slices or mince, put in a slow-cooker overnight, sieve-out the cracklings from liquid lard, while hot. Pour to plastic tubs. Feed the cat.

Mainstream media hinting that Atkins was right!

2010-12-24T13:44:00.000-05:00

A reversal on carbs

I am going to put a big quote from this article, since it puts this better than any abstract of mine would have done:

Fat was once the devil. Now more nutritionists are pointing accusingly at sugar and refined grains....

Carb consumption has risen over the years. So have U.S. obesity levels. (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times) ...

Most people can count calories. Many have a clue about where fat lurks in their diets. However, fewer give carbohydrates much thought, or know why they should.

But a growing number of top nutritional scientists blame excessive carbohydrates — not fat — for America's ills. They say cutting carbohydrates is the key to reversing obesity, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and hypertension.

"Fat is not the problem," says Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. "If Americans could eliminate sugary beverages, potatoes, white bread, pasta, white rice and sugary snacks, we would wipe out almost all the problems we have with weight and diabetes and other metabolic diseases."

It's a confusing message. For years we've been fed the line that eating fat would make us fat and lead to chronic illnesses. "Dietary fat used to be public enemy No. 1," says Dr. Edward Saltzman, associate professor of nutrition and medicine at Tufts University. "Now a growing and convincing body of science is pointing the finger at carbs, especially those containing refined flour and sugar."

Americans, on average, eat 250 to 300 grams of carbs a day, accounting for about 55% of their caloric intake. The most conservative recommendations say they should eat half that amount. Consumption of carbohydrates has increased over the years with the help of a 30-year-old, government-mandated message to cut fat....

The first sign of insulin resistance is a condition called metabolic syndrome — a red flag that diabetes, and possibly heart disease, is just around the corner. People are said to have the syndrome when they have three or more of the following: high blood triglycerides (more than 150 mg); high blood pressure (over 135/85); central obesity (a waist circumference in men of more than 40 inches and in women, more than 35 inches); low HDL cholesterol (under 40 in men, under 50 in women); or elevated fasting glucose.

About one-fourth of adults has three or more of these symptoms.

"Put these people on a low-carb diet and they'll not only lose weight, which always helps these conditions, but their blood levels will improve," Phinney says. In a 12-week study published in 2008, Phinney and his colleagues put 40 overweight or obese men and women with metabolic syndrome on a 1,500-calorie diet. Half went on a low-fat, high-carb diet. The others went on a low-carb, high-fat diet. The low-fat group consumed 12 grams of saturated fat a day out of a total of 40 grams of fat, while the low-carb group ate 36 grams of saturated fat a day — three times more — out of a total of 100 grams of fat.

Despite all the extra saturated fat the low-carb group was getting, at the end of the 12 weeks, levels of triglycerides (which are risk factors for heart disease) had dropped by 50% in this group. Levels of good HDL cholesterol increased by 15%.

In the low-fat, high-carb group, triglycerides dropped only 20% and there was no change in HDL.

The take-home message from this study and others like it is that — contrary to what many expect — dietary fat intake is not directly related to blood fat. Rather, the amount of carbohydrates in the diet appears to be a potent contributor.

"The good news," adds Willett, "is that based on what we know, almost everyone can avoid Type 2 diabetes. Avoiding unhealthy carbohydrates is an important part of that solution." For those who are newly diagnosed, he adds, a low-carb diet can take the load off the pancreas before it gets too damaged and improve the condition — reducing or averting the need for insulin or other diabetes meds.

Americans can also blame high-carb diets for why the population has gotten fatter over the last 30 years, says Phinney, who is co-author of "The New Atkins for a New You" (Simon & Schuster, 2010).

"Carbohydrates are a metabolic bully," Phinney says. "They cut in front of fat as a fuel source and insist on being burned first. What isn't burned gets stored as fat, and doesn't come out of storage as long as carbs are available. And in the average American diet, they always are."

Here's how Phinney explains it: When you cut carbs, your body first uses available glycogen as fuel. When that's gone, the body turns to fat and the pancreas gets a break. Blood sugar stabilizes, insulin levels drop, fat burns. That's why the diet works for diabetics and for weight loss.

When the body switches to burning fat instead of glycogen, it goes into a process called nutritional ketosis. If a person eats 50 or fewer grams of carbs, his body will go there, Phinney says. (Nutritional ketosis isn't to be confused with ketoacidosis, a dangerous condition that can occur in diabetics.)

Beyond the fat-burning effects of ketosis, people lose weight on low-carb diets because fat and protein increase satisfaction and reduce appetite. On the flip side, simple carbs cause an insulin surge, which triggers a blood sugar drop, which makes you hungry again.

"At my obesity clinic, my default diet for treating obesity, Type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome is a low-carb diet," says Dr. Eric Westman, director of the Lifestyle Medicine Clinic at Duke University Medical Center, and co-author of the new Atkins book. "If you take carbohydrates away, all these things get better."

Study: add more carbs be more hungry!

2010-11-30T21:42:00.001-05:00

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A new study: "A Paleolithic diet is more satiating per calorie than a Mediterranean-like diet in individuals with ischemic heart disease"

What is remarkable about it, is that the patients felt more satiated and thus ate automatically 24% less by their own choice, and the only major difference between the two tested diets was the amount of carbohydrates (grains)! Everything else was very similar.

Think about it: both groups eat some typical basic foodstuff, then just let one group add 82g more carbohydrates (grains!) plus 13g more fat (oil) per day and what is the main result? - THEY FEEL MORE HUNGRY!

Definition of money and the time-symmetry

2010-11-27T22:18:00.003-05:00

A few thoughts:

1) Gold Money = Past Work.

A money system that is 100% backed by tangible products such as gold or by some real consummer produce such as food, cars, seashells etc is the symbol or equivalent substitute of work done in the past. A found pot of Roman gold coins represents work done by some people 2000 years ago. To create a monetary system like that you first have to mine out and accumulate some gold, copper etc or make some products and then you can have a "money" backed by it. It is mildly deflationary (in a harmless way, probably) since the amount of goods and products generally accumulates faster than gold.

A monetary system based on the assets produced in the past is inherently stable for the same reason that the automation control systems based on the "feed-forward" principle (as opposed to "feed-back") have to be. That is because past products are inherently more solid that the promise of future products! (I was just about to write "because the Past is Immutable" but on the second thought decided not to).

It's downside (or perhaps an advantage?) is the fact that it is very difficult to generate new investment credit and lend money very quickly for large projects, other then through a slow process of accumulation of capital. In particular, it is very difficult for governments and large corporations to obtain large amounts of capital without direct taxation or outright confiscation of capital from productive business entities. Such activity cannot be easily concealed by authorities and if attempted, it would be declared illegal as well as incompatible with the democratic principles. This type of monetary system probably enforces honesty and encourages work-oriented culture (if backed by the effective legal system). This is probably the main reason why the gold backed monetary system was first subverted and finally abolished by most governments.

2) Debt Money = Future Work.

Money based exclusively on debt is the present equivalent substitute of a work promised, a work that will be done in the future. Other than this difference, the system works (initially) the same way as #1! It is typically mildly inflationary because it is always easier to borrow more and generate excessive debt. The system tends to generate more of the debt-backed money, than can be reasonably predicted to be covered by the productive work in the future. In addition to the inherently poor money issuance control, unpredictable disasters or business failures tend to undermine a balance tilting it towards inflation.

When the future comes and some debt proves to be defaulted, then the equivalent amount of debt-backed money must by law be destroyed. This 'must' NEVER happens! It's a Keynesian's fallacy, for example that a government is supposed to be counter-cyclical, restraining its spending during a boom. In theory it must be done but never gets done! At least, not when the big governments run by incompetent collectivists have their way! :)

Eventually, excessive unbacked phantom money keeps accumulating because nobody is destroying it! Nobody likes becoming the first one to burn their paper banknotes, admit that their bonds (held or issued) are worthless etc. In the event of mass defaults, business closures or just corporate downsizing, the debt-backed monetary system seems to give all players an incentive to maintain a fiction and pretend that the paper assets backed by the defunct debt still have some value. It encourages the players to cheat, and punishes honesty. This honesty disincentive is also compounded by massive leverage through banking lending multiplier (it's name is '33') and derrivatives (I think the system would probably still remain inherently unstable even without the multipliers and derrivatives).

The main advantage (or perhaps its main fault) is the fact that it is very easy to generate additional credit to finance some urgent projects or startups. It's main alure is probably the fact that the very large players such as governments and some very large corporations, may generate and use gigantic amounts of new credit/money without actually producing anything useful co-measurate with the amount of resources they are appropriating. They can do all that in plain view without breaking any law, and without breaking principles of democracy.

3) Present Time Money

Can Present Money be defined as the average of #1 and #2? One can envisage a 50%-50% mixture (or similar ratio) of both forms of money-backing asset classes (hard assets from the past or gold, plus debt counted as an asset), but it is not really equivalent to any product being produced in the present! The 50-50 money backing scheme has no relation to the current work being done in the present time! Such monetary systems have been used in the past and are called "fractional reserve gold backed currency". It is like standing on two boats with one foot in each.

I think, the nearest equivalent of a "money" system that reflects a work being done in the present time is barter - which in fact uses no money at all! Such a system did work in the past, but only in a very primeval economy. Could such a system have worked in an industrialized economy such as during the Industrial Revolution in the last 200 years? Absolutely not! Would such a system work in the future information based economy? Perhaps, I don't know but I would not exclude a possibility that it may work! We have to get used to a habit of challenging the old "wisdoms" because the new ways of global information access make certain formerly impractical ideas possible, for example a direct democracy! I have a gut feeling that this could be the key point behind the future economic revival!

I think, that kind of systemic classification based on the symmetry patterns is always helpful in science, it may even have some predictive power.
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Drug trial success - anacetrapib did not kill significantly more than placebo!

2010-11-26T21:11:00.001-05:00

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This is great news for Merck regarding their new HDL-boosting-LDL-busting drug Anacetrapib. Published about a week ago:

Safety of Anacetrapib in Patients with or at High Risk for Coronary Heart Disease

Quote: "The prespecified Bayesian analysis indicated that this event distribution provided a predictive probability (confidence) of 94% that anacetrapib would not be associated with a 25% increase in cardiovascular events, as seen with torcetrapib."

See also this:

Merck’s Risky Bet on Heart Drugs May Yield Lipitor-Like Success

Interestingly, the company's stock declined by about 5% in November to date.
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Lack of social skills made us human

2010-11-16T19:12:00.008-05:00

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[Part 2 of 2]

Continuing on Sapolsky's lecture, see this video:

Robert Sapolsky: Stress, Neurodegeneration and Individual Differences

About 50 minutes into this lecture, Sapolsky changes slightly the subject and describes his stress research on baboon monkeys in Africa, describing their society's structure and detailed habits. This was discussed in the context of biochemistry and stress hormones (glucocorticoids), with blood samples taken and analyzed, correlated within the context of the social interaction. Over 20 years of solid experimental and observational research, really impressive piece of work!

Brief summary.

Baboons in the reserve (Serengeti) need only about 3 hours a day to gather their food. They live in baboons' paradise, their health is good and infant's mortality is lower than among neighboring human villages. They spend the rest of the day, 9 hours every day on average making each other miserable and stressing each other to the limits of their adrenal biochemistry, using social interplay, emotional and physical harassment. They follow a very elaborate and rigid social hierarchy with a strong male gang leader and a score of lesser levels. At each position within the gang, a member is continuously subjected to harassment and being picked on by higher member, while at the same time, they are compelled by their biology to release their own stress by picking, incessantly upon the weaker members of lesser position.

I strongly recommend to watch this video to give you a better idea what it is really like. I have to admit I couldn't help by noticing how similar is their structure to the structure of the human subculture in:

- criminal gangs
- government institutions,
- large corporations
- armed forces and paramilitary organizations,
- large religious institutions
- academic institutions

Comments and thoughts

If one ever wondered about any of the above cultures, then watching Sapolsky's video will neatly illustrate what is that all about. In contrast, one wonders what kind of culture would rather protects the weaker members and work creatively to build tools, shelters and grow food rather then spend all their time on social warfare? I think, it can't possibly be a culture solely focused on social interplay, with a rigid hierarchical structure. I think the pattern is the same, regardless whether we are dealing with intelligent humans or monkeys. The main dichotomy is I think clear: a group either focuses most of their free time on perfecting the social interaction and learning practical social manipulation skills to the detriment of other skills, or it follows a decentralized model allowing their members to develop and use individual skills in creating technology, art and science (individuals being free to keep the results of their work!). This dichotomy can be seen in both individual characters and on the scale of the herds, tribes, societies or countries. This dichotomy is expressed in two different approaches towards problem-solving. For example, take a lack of something like food: one approach is to steal food from others. The second approach is to search or grow more food - to fix the actual problem! Another example that we keep hearing so often is energy and resources' shortage. The "monkey" way would be for Mr. Leader to make me and you use less energy, while conserving what is left for his elite friends and his electorate. The other less fashionable but natural human way is to use technology to tap into a source of energy that is thousands of time more abundant than oil or coal. One mindset is about controlling the people; the other is about controlling the environment.

Coming back to the title of this note: I think there is a snowball-in-hell chance that any society behaving along the pattern described in Sapolsky's lecture on baboons, would ever develop technology, art or science. It is also doubtful, if they ever managed to capture the fruit of modern civilization by force, that they would be able to keep and maintain those achievements!

The fact that humans did achieve a highly developed technological civilization means that the periods of herd-like rigid hierarchical social structures must have been a rare anomaly rather than the rule! Otherwise we probably would never evolve creative skills and would be living today in a tropical "paradise" living off wild fruit and spending our time plotting how to became "herd-managers".

No it is not the society and the social skills that made us human, it was the lack of it! Those who spend their time partying and socializing create no wealth and no value. Those who tinker, build, experiment and learn science - do! It was the "nerddom" that drove us forward while social skills held us backwards towards social competition, stress, warfare and death.

[see also Dozent's comment underneath]

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(Style and grammar edited 7/02/2011)
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Ketone bodies protect neurons from stress hormone-induced damage

2010-11-15T21:45:00.003-05:00

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[Part 1 of 2]

This is inspired by this video presentation:

Robert Sapolsky: Stress, Neurodegeneration and Individual Differences

Scrolling to minute 26 of the video, reveals a slide summarizing the results of an experiment, where neural tissue was exposed to an "insult" (damage cause) equivalent to hypoglycemia.

The degree of damage to the neurons was asessed in volume units (vertical) while the 4 cases are represented by color bars:

green - damage caused solely by the original "insult"
yellow - damage caused by the "insult" in the presence of glucocorticoid (stress hormone)
red - damage caused by the "insult" in the presence of glucocorticoids and mannose sugar
white - damage caused by the "insult" in the presence of glucocorticoids and ketone bodies (beta-hydroxy-butyrate)

What do I make out of that? Basically, it shows that not only ketone bodies work better as the energy source than mannose sugar, but also protect against the damage caused by both factors combined: hypoglycemia and glucocorticoid: - the white bar is smaller than the original green bar on the left!

[part 2 essay inspired by the same video will be titled "Lack of social skills made us human!" ]

Cow's milk formula triggers t1 diabetes, new study

2010-11-12T19:26:00.007-05:00

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Dietary Intervention in Infancy and Later Signs of Beta-Cell Autoimmunity

A journalist's write-up is here

Double-blind study on 230 infants with HLA-conferred susceptibility to type 1 diabetes and with at least one family member with type 1 diabetes, were split into test group fed casein hydrolizate based formula, and the control group fed conventional cow's milk based formula.

Autoantibodies to insulin, glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD), the insulinoma-associated 2 molecule (IA-2), and zinc transporter 8 were analyzed, as well as monitored for the incidence of diabetes t1, until the age of 10.

The risk of developing diabetes t1 markers in the casein hydrolizate group was substantially reduced - by ~50%, compared with the control group reciving cow's milk formula!

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Updated (14-Nov-2010) This is going to be a story of two food villains and one food hero.

There is more to milk that 1 paper. Much more: a study involving a billion people. The China study. I am going to dump some facts here for the reference.

My source of data is Mono Mortality document. A cursory look at all diseases with the focus on correlation with milk reveals that milk correlates positively with almost all diseases! The same cursory look reveals also that two other food items: wheat flour and eggs correlate very consistently too across most diseases,
one positively one negatively. Note: positive correlation means that an increase in consumption is associated with more disease and more harm, whereas negative correlation means an increase in consumption is associated with less risk of a disease. The main bullet points of this review are these:

* Wheat flour correlates positively with almost all diseases (except pulmonary TB in adults)

* Milk correlates positively with almost all diseases (except diabetes)

* Eggs correlate negatively with almost all diseases (except cancer, diabetes and IHD)

One should keep in mind that a correlation is no causuation, however the fact that milk and wheat and eggs correlate simultaneously and follow the same consistent pattern, albeit with different signs, may indicate that something real is going on in the human biochemistry in relation to those foods. This is a strong indication that more reseaarch should be made to investigate the effect. This is also a indictment against Cornell University that sat on such a rich set of data for a decade without doing anything usefull about it. (Other than letting one of their staff profesor hijack the study title to propagate his veganism!)

--------------

Here are some examples, I will list correlation factors from the above linked document, for disease mortalities against wheat, milk and eggs only. Correlation factors are given as two digit numbers in percentage, followed by the food item.

M015 Pullmonary TB (age 0-34):+34 Milk , -27 Eggs
M016 Pullmonary TB (age 35-69): -29 Wheat
M018 Other TB (age 35-69): +52 Wheat, -30 Eggs
M023 All cancer (age 35-69): +31 Eggs
M043 Endocrine (age 0-34): -36 Eggs
M044 Endocrine (age 35-69): -31 Milk
M045 Diabetes (age 35-69): -29 Milk, +26 Eggs
M050 Mental (age 0-34): +75% Milk
M059 All Vascular (age 35-69): +56 Wheat, +29 Milk, -26 Eggs
M060 Rheumatic (age 0-34): +37 Milk, -35 Eggs
M061 Rheumatic (age 35-69): +26 Wheat, -32 Eggs
M062 Hypertension (age 35-69): +43 Wheat, +75 Milk, -28 Eggs
M063 Ischaemic heart d.(age 35-69): +59 Wheat, +25 Eggs
M065 Stroke (age 35-69): +43 Wheat
M066 All vasc excl stroke (0-34): +33 Wheat, +42 Milk, -43 Eggs
M067 All vasc excl stroke (age 35-69):+65 Wheat, +50 Milk, -33 Eggs
M068 All respiratory (age 0-34): +50 Milk, -27 Eggs
M069 All respiratory (age 35-69): - (no correlation) -
M070 Pneumonia (age 0-34): +51 Milk, -27 Eggs
M071 Pneumonia (age 35-69): -32 Eggs
M087 Pregnancy and birth: +41 Wheat, +49 Milk, -48 Eggs
M104 Maternal mort.: +38 Wheat, +46 Milk, -42 Eggs

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Is modern wheat variety more toxic?

2010-11-10T21:04:00.001-05:00

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This time I am posting some blog links, to indicate an important issue that we should really pay a very close attention to:

Dwarf mutant wheat

Why do morphine-blocking drugs make you lose weight?

The second link discusses the addictive opiate-like properties of wheat exorphines.

Very interesting discussions of metabolic and biochemnical effects of wheat:

Hyperlipid Blog

To complete the picture, here is another must-read article by Denise Minger on this subject:

The China Study, Wheat, and Heart Disease; Oh My!

Last but not least my own simple graph presentation of China study heart disease versus wheat consumption:

China Study says wheat is associated with vascular disease
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Scientists Find Liberal Gene?

2010-10-30T11:49:00.004-04:00

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UCSD Paper:
Friendships Moderate an Association Between the DRD4 Gene and Political Ideology
by Jaime E. Settle [jsettle at ucsd.edu], Christopher T. Dawes, Nicholas A. Christakis, James H. Fowler

Quotations:

"It is the crucial interaction of two factors - the genetic
predisposition and the environmental condition of having many friends
in adolescence - that is associated with being more liberal,”
according to the study.
...

Here, we link our understanding of the genetic basis of political ideology with
environmental factors known to influence political attitudes. We suggest that individuals with the 7R allele of the DRD4 gene, given certain environmental stimuli, are more likely to have a liberal ideology.

...
The 7R allele of the DRD4 gene is known to be associated with several haracteristics, such as increased extraversion, novelty-seeking, and sensation-seeking (Eichhammer et al. 2005).
...

In a landmark piece synthesizing five decades of research on conservatism and social-cognitive motives, Jost et al. (2003) assert a motivational basis for the stable, definitional core of conservative ideology, claiming that conservative ideologies are adopted in part to satisfy a variety of social, cognitive, and psychological needs. The authors write that people’s response to threatening environmental stimuli, such as fear and uncertainty, affects the development and expression of political beliefs concerning the core components of conservative ideology, such as resistance to change and acceptance of inequality (p. 366).

We would expect to find a negative correlation between traits associated with DRD4-7R and a conservative ideology if conservatives perceive new experiences as a threat and thus, to satisfy their psychological needs, they avoid novelty and sensation seeking. This has been demonstrated in the literature with sensation seeking (Kish and Donnenwerth 1972, Kish 1973), a taste for broad-mindedness (Feather 1979, Feather 1984), and openness to experience (Pratto et al. 1994, Jost and Thompson 2000, Peterson et al. 1997, Peterson and Lane 2001).
...

Novelty-seeking should not necessarily lead one to make more friends - those high in the 7R allele often exhibit certain asocial behaviors. Rather, the influence of a large number of friends could serve to develop social cognition (Staub 1995), create a better understanding of other’s needs (Niebrzydowski 1995) and greater consideration in regard to the society in which they live (Selman 1990, White et al. 1987), as well as increase expression of prosocial behaviors (Hartup 1993).
...
It is the combination of the desire for new experience and many different pathways to these experiences that we hypothesize has an impact on political ideology.

-----
(See also this article.)

I find it fascinating that a dychotomy between different types of characters comes out even through genetics! It makes me think that a difference between the two classes of population goes deeper than just "liberal" and "conservative" views in the political sense. The authors identify the liberal view as the one associated with openess, curiosity and a willingness to embrace new experience, where as the conservative is described as perceiving new experiences as threats, thus, to satisfy their psychological needs, they avoid novelty and sensation-seeking, and tend to "accept inequality" - meaning acceptance of the class hierarchy and the authority I presume.

This is not quite the way I see it, based on my experience. Since I grew up in a communist state before moving to the West, I have noticed an awful lot of Western "Liberals" (in the American sense of this word) exhibiting anything but curiosity and openess, while some of the poster "boys" and "girls" of Conservatism ("Neocons" as they are being fondly nicknamed), seem to have been more open to new ideas or willing to "rock the boat".

I think a more accurate way of political labelling is to use the European meaning for "Liberalism" = pro individual freedom. In the US language it would be called "Libertarianism". European Liberals have always been unafraid and willing to entertain new ideas while the European "Conservatives" were those interested in preserving the power of the oligarchies and their institutions thus any new ideas were generally regarded as harmful. On the other hand, in the North America, the Conervatives seem to consist of an unworkable - "unholy" mixture of the European style Conservatives and Libertarians.

I see a much more fundamental split in the present society, along the lines of "open and individualistic" versus "closed and hierarchical" that fits the above described model better than the political divide. I wrote about that in the following posts:

Human regression, anthropology

Baby boomers' monkey business

It is not just as much about socializing and having many friends versus being a recluse - it all probably depends whom you have to deal with! If one is mostly surrounded by the members of a not-ones-own types then obviously, that person isn't going to spent as much time socializing, as he/she would have liked. Each type is as sociable as the other one but on their own terms! They probably perceive (mutually) any social or societal/civic/business activities of the other kind as boring, unnatural, fake or criminal. I know I do!

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Insulin, Glucose, Grim Reaper and Sweet Sixteen gene

2010-10-27T22:53:00.004-04:00

Sugar (wiki)

Important new reasearch published just recently by Cynthia Kenyon, University of California, described in the following Oct-26,2010 Daily Mail article (Jerome Burne):

Can cutting carbohydrates from your diet make you live longer?

Quotes:

She made her remarkable breakthrough after studying roundworms, specifically the C.elegans, a worm just a millimetre in size that lives in soil in temperate climates all over the world. By tweaking some of their genes she has been able to help these worms live up to six times longer than normal. 'Not only that, but we also know how to make them stay healthy all that time as well,' she told an audience at the Wellcome Collection in London earlier this month.
...
Scientists already knew how to make laboratory animals live longer and healthier lives - you just cut back their calories to about three-quarters of their normal amount. ... But what Professor Kenyon found out was why drastically reducing calories has such a remarkable effect. She discovered that it changed the way two crucial genes behaved. It turned down the gene that controls insulin, which in turn switched on another gene, which acted like an elixir of life. 'We jokingly called the first gene the Grim Reaper because when it’s switched on, the lifespan is fairly short,' she explains. The second 'elixir' gene seems to bring all the anti-ageing benefits - its proper name is DAF 16, but it was quickly nicknamed 'Sweet Sixteen' because it turned the worms into teenagers.
...
Discovering the Grim Reaper gene has prompted the professor to dramatically alter her own diet, cutting right back on carbohydrates. That’s because carbs make your body produce more insulin (to mop up the extra blood sugar carbs produce); and more insulin means a more active Grim Reaper. So the vital second gene, the 'elixir' one, won't get turned on.

To test this, last year she added a tiny amount of sugary glucose to the normal diet of some of her worms that had had their genes engineered so they were living much longer, healthier lives. 'The effect was remarkable,' she says. 'The sugary glucose blocked the ''youthful'' genes and they lost most of the health gains.'
...
Following Kenyon’s lead, other researchers started looking for the Grim Reaper/ Sweet Sixteen combination in other animals — and of course in humans.

They found it.

One clue came from a small remote community of dwarves living in northern Ecuador who are cancer-free. They are missing the part of the Grim Reaper gene that controls a hormone called insulin-like growth factor. The downside is they only grow to 4ft tall because the hormone is needed for growth. But this missing bit of the Grim Reaper gene also means they don’t develop cancer and are less likely to suffer from heart disease or obesity.

Professor Jeff Holly, who specialises in insulin-like growth factor, confirms that it is linked to cancer of the prostate, breast and colon. In fact raised insulin levels, triggered by high carbohydrate consumption, could be what connects many of our big killers. Research is at its early stage, but raised insulin triggers an increase in cholesterol production in the liver, makes the walls of blood vessels contract so blood pressure goes up and stimulates the release of fats called triglycerides (linked to heart disease).
...
'Carbohydrates, and especially refined ones like sugar, make you produce lots of extra insulin. I’ve been keeping my intake really low ever since I discovered this. I've cut out all starch such as potatoes, noodles, rice, bread and pasta. Instead I have salads, but no sweet dressing, lots of olive oil and nuts, tons of green vegetables along with cheese, chicken and eggs. I'll have a hamburger without a bun and fish without batter or chips. I eat some fruit every day, but not too much and almost no processed food. I stay away from sweets, except 80 per cent chocolate.'

--------------

Refs (older, not this one):

http://kenyonlab.ucsf.edu/html/history.html

http://kenyonlab.ucsf.edu/Kenyon_et_al_Nature.pdf

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Can Ireland exit EU and join US?

2010-10-24T12:20:00.006-04:00

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Something is happening, see the articles:

Soden: Let's quit EU and join US

Frederick Forsyth: Rise up, reclaim your country

Leaving the euro might well be our 'least bad' option

Mike Soden's [Irish Central Bank advisor] announcement is probably not accidental because of it's timing. This issue was simmering since 2008. Ireland jeopardised its sovereignty by assuming their private banking debt on call from Brussels, in return for some guarantees, as revealed through some leaks on David McWilliams forum, recently.

The fact that Soden chose now to speak out plus the rumors of a feud between Lenihan [fin.min.] and Cowen [prime min.], indicate that something bad is happening. My guess is that they are finding out to their surprize that those German and French "guarantees" are probably not as solid as they seemed 2 years ago (if it comes to foreign "guarantees" they should ask Poles - they may know something about that...).

Also, Lenihan has probably realized (by adding up all figures) that Irish economy will not recover on cutbacks alone. The reason is obvious to me or McWilliams - the lack of indigenous industry. A service based economy (with a notable exception of the Swiss banking phenomenon) cannot cut-back its way to prosperity, as Greeks are now finding out too.

[shocking economic heresy=on] You have to actually _produce_ something that other people would buy and charge competitive prices for that. [shocking economic heresy=off]

In my humble opinion, Ireland will not be able to solve it by exiting EU and joining US, going alone or with other alliances - the moment this happens, European banks will probably immediately pull out resources and loans from the Irish banks collapsing them and sinking the state. It is worse than Iceland - Iceland is small enough to survive being cut off, on cod fishing alone. Ireland is too big to do that and too small to do what the British are doing now.

Also, you can see here a classical example of "monkey" regressors' culture in action, among the Irish/EU ruling caste: when everything is well they cooperate, when "bananas" are lacking, they kick out the weakest members out of their herd.

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Update 8-Nov-2010

Interesting articles:

THE BIG PICTURE: Ireland is effectively insolvent – the next crisis will be mass home mortgage default, writes MORGAN KELLY

Eoghan Harris: Public-sector wealth can only lead to private decay

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Update 11-Dec-2010

Interesting article:

Iceland safe, Ireland sorry?

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Alzheimer's, B12 and homocysteine - vegans beware!

2010-10-19T22:41:00.002-04:00

Sunny Side Up (Wikipedia)

This is based on the newly published Scandinavian study:
Homocysteine and holotranscobalamin and the risk of Alzheimer disease

Quote:

Results: The odds ratios (ORs) (95% confidence interval [CI]) for AD were 1.16 (1.04–1.31) per increase of 1 µmol/L of tHcy at baseline and 0.980 (0.965–0.995) for each increase of 1 pmol/L baseline holoTC.

Notice how did the authors skillfully manage to conceal the impact (really huge!) - by not putting the risk ratio over the full range in the abstract. Instead they mitigated their grant-loosing risk by showing only an incremental change per 1umol/L or per 1pmol/L of the intependent varaibles. (Note: tHcy=homocysteine, holoTC=B12, AD=Alzheimer's Disease).

The impact seems to be huge indeed, based on some quick-and-dirty calculations of the typical tHcy and B12 variability among some populations. Taking two other studies (see [1] and [2] below) giving the average difference between vegetarians and non-vegetarians for tHcy and B12 ( 2.6 to 12.3 umol/L and -94 to -195 pmol/L respectively), applying the above incremental ratios of (1.16 and 0.980 respectively) one obtains the estimated ralative risk ratio for AD for vegetarians versus non-vegetarians of: 1.5 to 6.2 based on the homocysteine, and 6.7 to 51 based on the B12 data.

(Disclaimer: risk ratio estimates that are based on statistical data do not prove nor disprove causuation.)

My conclusion: the study indicates that the B12 defficiency as well as (independently) high homocysteine seem to be very strong predictors of Alzheimer's disease risk. The overal risk estimate is also much stronger than the washed-out figures presented in the paper's abstract. This should be of utmost importance for vegans and vegetarians!

See also:

1. Effect of Vegetarian Diet on Homocysteine Levels

2. Plasma Homocysteine Levels in Taiwanese Vegetarians Are Higher than Those of Omnivores

3. BBC Health News: Vitamin B12 link to Alzheimer's backed by study

4. BBC Health News: Vitamin B 'puts off Alzheimer's'

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red meat fights back

2010-10-15T21:35:00.001-04:00

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New meta study:

Red meat consumption: an overview of the risks and benefits.

Abstract:

Red meat is long established as an important dietary source of protein and essential nutrients including iron, zinc and vitamin B12, yet recent reports that its consumption may increase the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and colon cancer have led to a negative perception of the role of red meat in health. The aim of this paper is to review existing literature for both the risks and benefits of red meat consumption, focusing on case-control and prospective studies. Despite many studies reporting an association between red meat and the risk of CVD and colon cancer, several methodological limitations and inconsistencies were identified which may impact on the validity of their findings. Overall, there is no strong evidence to support the recent conclusion from the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) report that red meat has a convincing role to play in colon cancer. A substantial amount of evidence supports the role of lean red meat as a positive moderator of lipid profiles with recent studies identifying it as a dietary source of the anti-inflammatory long chain (LC) n-3 PUFAs and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA). In conclusion, moderate consumption of lean red meat as part of a balanced diet is unlikely to increase risk for CVD or colon cancer, but may positively influence nutrient intakes and fatty acid profiles, thereby impacting positively on long-term health.

This blog article contains a long list of studies (with abstracts) on this topic.

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U.S. Air Force Officers Recount Experiences With UFOs

2010-10-08T22:14:00.001-04:00

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ABC News article by KI MAE HEUSSNER, Sept.27,2010

Quote:

During a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., seven former Air Force officers once stationed at nuclear bases around the country said that not only have UFOs visited Air Force bases, some have succeeded in disabling nuclear missiles stationed there. ...

Why am I quoting this? I don't know, though I am getting an impression that something is changing about the tone of the media outlets, regarding this particular topic. Perhaps this fact is important!
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Vit D in childhood and diabetes T1 or schizophrenia - almost total protection!

2010-09-04T10:48:00.007-04:00

Fatty fish, such as salmon etc, are natural sources of vitamin D. (source - Wikipedia)

How often do we see a statistical risk reduction of some disease 8-times (relative risk reduction RR=0.12) or by a factor of 12 (RR=0.08)? One cannot be 100% sure based on the outcome of just two studies but I am tempted to entertain an idea of the TOTAL PROTECTION, with the residual incidents possibly explained by non-conformance or observational errors.

Intake of vitamin D and risk of type 1 diabetes: a birth-cohort study.

Quote:

Vitamin D supplementation was associated with a decreased frequency of type 1 diabetes when adjusted for neonatal, anthropometric, and social characteristics (rate ratio [RR] for regular vs no supplementation 0.12, 95% CI 0.03-0.51, and irregular vs no supplementation 0.16, 0.04-0.74. Children who regularly took the recommended dose of vitamin D (2000 IU daily) had a RR of 0.22 (0.05-0.89) compared with those who regularly received less than the recommended amount. Children suspected of having rickets during the first year of life had a RR of 3.0 (1.0-9.0) compared with those without such a suspicion.

Vitamin D supplementation during the first year of life and risk of schizophrenia: a Finnish birth cohort study.

Quote:

RESULTS: In males, the use of either irregular or regular vitamin D supplements was associated with a reduced risk of schizophrenia (Risk ratio (RR)=0.08, 95% CI 0.01-0.95; RR=0.12, 95% CI 0.02-0.90, respectively) compared with no supplementation. In males, the use of at least 2000 IU of vitamin D was associated with a reduced risk of schizophrenia (RR=0.23, 95% CI 0.06-0.95) compared to those on lower doses. There were no significant associations between either the frequency or dose of vitamin D supplements and (a) schizophrenia in females, nor with (b) nonpsychotic disorder or psychotic disorders other than schizophrenia in either males or females.

CONCLUSION: Vitamin D supplementation during the first year of life is associated with a reduced risk of schizophrenia in males. Preventing hypovitaminosis D during early life may reduce the incidence of schizophrenia.

Update (6/9/2010):

Another paper on the subject (thanks Neonomide):

Relation of schizophrenia prevalence to latitude, climate, fish consumption, infant mortality, and skin color: a role for prenatal vitamin d deficiency and infections?

A review article by J.J. Cannell MD of "The Vitamin D Council":

The Vitamin D Newsletter August 2009, Vitamin D and Schizophrenia

More update (18/09/2010)

Paper: Schizophrenia, gluten, and low-carbohydrate, ketogenic diets: a case report and review of the literature

Quote:

C.D. is a 70 year-old Caucasian female with a diagnosis of schizophrenia since the age of seventeen. Her diagnosis was based on paranoia, disorganized speech, and hallucinations. She reported both auditory and visual hallucinations,... she has had these hallucinations on almost a daily basis since the age of seven. ...has also been hospitalized at least five times over the last six years for suicide attempts and increased psychotic symptoms.

... Over the course of 12 months, C.D. has continued the low-carbohydrate, ketogenic diet and has had no recurrence of her auditory or visual hallucinations. She has also continued to lose weight (body weight 131.4 kilograms) and experience improvements in her energy level.

Wheat

2010-09-02T08:56:00.001-04:00

If you haven't already seen the post, this is a must-read:
The China Study, Wheat, and Heart Disease; Oh My!

No benefit of veg and fruit consumption in t2 diabetes!

2010-08-21T13:19:00.005-04:00

Fig 4 Hazard ratios for incidence in diabetes type 2 for highest versus lowest intake of fruit and vegetables combined. Weights are from random effects analysis

Newly published meta-study in BMJ:

Fruit and vegetable intake and incidence of type 2 diabetes mellitus: systematic review and meta-analysis

Quote:

Results Six studies met the inclusion criteria; four of these studies also provided separate information on the consumption of green leafy vegetables. Summary estimates showed that greater intake of green leafy vegetables was associated with a 14% (hazard ratio 0.86, 95% confidence interval 0.77 to 0.97) reduction in risk of type 2 diabetes (P=0.01). The summary estimates showed no significant benefits of increasing the consumption of vegetables, fruit, or fruit and vegetables combined.

I have to add a comment:
There is only one supposedly significant, positive correlation found in this study - the one with green veg (hazard ratio 0.86). It is possible [but see also (*)] that the significancy results from pooling four separate studies together. When you look at the individual studies on FIG5 : three are only marginally positive, that is their error estimates touch 1.0, while one large study [39] (Women’s Health Study) shows the hazard ratio of 1.0 which indicates no effect.

This paper [37] (Nurses' Health Study data) is also interesting because it is one of the largest and longest of its kind. Again, no benefit overall from vegetable consumption and miniscule benefit from greens alone. It also shows this interesting graph:

Note (*): There is a discrepancy in the data. The resulting hazard ratio may also turn out to be not statistically significant for green vegetables, since the overall P=0.18 as per FIG.5 while at the same time it is written as P=0.01 in the abstract for the same result. Given the wide spread 0.77-0.97, my guess is that the abstract figure of 0.01 may be a typo, but I am not 100% sure.

China Study says wheat is associated with vascular disease

2010-08-03T20:58:00.005-04:00

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... but probably not with cancer!

The following graphs are based on the Raw China Study data , using 1989 part of the study, total M+F, 3-rd "xiang". My original spreadsheet is here in OpenOffice 3.2 Calc format. The following graphs represent raw scatter plots for specific disease mortality (all vascular or all cancer) against each of the independent variables, with no data processing of any kind.

--------------------------

I have to add a paper I found quoted by Denise Minger in her laterst response, that is definitely worth a note:

Nunes and Silva, 2009, "Systemic Correlates of Angiographic Coronary Artery Disease"

Quote:

Significant correlation values versus CADB [coronary artery disease burden] were seen with age (r 0.19, p 0.04), uric acid (r 0.18, p 0.048) and fasting plasma glucose (r 0.33, p<0.001).

Interestingly, in addition to plasma glucose, uric acid correlates with fructose consumption. Both point to metabolic syndrome and pre-diabetes as the main causative factor behind atherosclerosis in this particular study. How is Chinese wheat consumption fitting in here? Since rice does not correlate with vascular risk while wheat does, it may indicate a presence of another factor associated with wheat that correlates positively and perhaps causuatively with the metabolic syndrome and thus with the vascular disease. I am going to come back to this issue in the future posts.

Updated 7-Aug-2010

The situation is very confusing, since some studies done in the West such as those reviewed in this compilation or the Nurses' Study tend to indicate that consumption of the whole grain wheat correlates with lower heart disease. I can't think of any obvious explanation of that contradiciton. Perhaps one of the following possibilities may be playing a role:
(a) China Study is wrong or is showing a spurious correlation (albeit a very strong one M059 over D038 is +56%, see page 215); (b) Western medical studies are wrong or showing a spurious (weak -17% to -29%) correlation masking some other underlying factor such as an overal carbohydrate intake? (overall carbs intake also correlated with vasc disease in China Study!); (c) It may depend on what wheat consumption is compared against - either wheat compared against rice or whole wheat consumption compared against refined wheat and sugar? In the latter case the problem is what toxic factor playes the role in the refined wheat but not in the whole wheat? Logic would dictate that it should be the other way around, for example wheat germ agglutins (ref) should be more aboundand in the whole wheat products than in the refine flour products.

China Study says animal fat is healthy!

2010-08-03T20:47:00.002-04:00

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The following graphs are based on the Raw China Study data , using 1989 part of the study, total M+F, 3-rd "xiang". My original spreadsheet is here in OpenOffice 3.2 Calc format. The following graphs represent raw scatter plots for specific disease mortality (all vascular or all cancer) against each of the independent variables, with no data processing of any kind.

The China Study corroborates Kwasniewski's diet

2010-08-02T22:27:00.003-04:00

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The data seem to corroborate Dr. Kwasniewski's Optimal Diet, to some extent, in terms of the trend. That is, a higher fat shows a trend towards better health, where as the more protein and more carbs tend towards higher mortalities. At the same time the raw data I have seen so far do not seem to support an idea that plant based very low fat nutrition is healthier!

Dr. Kwasniewski's diet is high in animal fat, low in protein (unlike Atkins) and low in carbohydrates. Similar to Atkins but puts a restriction on protein (1g/kg of ideal body weight, per day) and does not advocate an "induction" stage followed by an increase in carbohydrates.

The following graphs are based on the Raw China Study data , using 1989 part of the study, total M+F, 3-rd "xiang". My original spreadsheet is here in OpenOffice 3.2 Calc format. (Sorry, no Excel, got tired of loosing data). The following graphs represent raw scatter plots for specific disease mortality (all vascular or all cancer) against each of the independent variables, with no data processing of any kind. You be the judge! :)

_________________________________________

VASCULAR DISEASE MORTALITY VERSUS MACRONUTRIENTS AND TOTAL BLOOD CHOLESTEROL

_________________________________________

ALL CANCER MORTALITY VERSUS MACRONUTRIENTS AND TOTAL BLOOD CHOLESTEROL

"..The ‘Grand Prix’...the most comprehensive large study ever undertaken of the relationship between diet and the risk of developing disease....tantalizing findings"
The New York Times

Atkins revisited

2010-07-31T15:33:00.005-04:00

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The reason I decided to post this note today is the following discussion
thread: Atkins Meat and Millet Diet . Start reading with Dolores' posts.

My Cholesterol Bomba

I started experimenting with the high animal fat low carb nutrition in July 1999. It worked so well for me that it became my lifestyle ever since. Since it never caused me any trouble, I could never understand why were some people, especially diabetics, opting out after just a few months with lots of complains. Yet those were exactly the people for whom a high fat low carb diet was best suited (*) and could have been the most benefitial had they been able to persist. Why couldn't they?

I think I can probably answer this question now:

The most likely reason behind diabeitc's failures to follow Atkins lies in the induction stage being too short and Dr. Atkins unfortunate recommendation to increase carbohydrates beyond the ketogenic limit (about 20g) following the short induction stage, as well as the lack of restriction on the amount of protein! Diabetics need probably about 2 years to adapt, before they can add more carbohydrates and protein back to their HIGH FAT diet. I needed 1.5 years before I could tolerate the average beyond 20g carbs a day!

Quote:

----------------

Fat does not cause permanent insulin resistance. Under normal circumstance, it only does it while you eat it, not a few hors afterwards. Even if I eat lots of fat, I can have 100g of carbs on the next day (though I rarely do).

My body WAS insulin resistant intitially on the high fat diet, but I was able to increase my occasional consumption of carbs way above my initial 50g level [NOTE: this is an error, should be 25], gradually over time.

In the first year I could not exceed 25g of carbs (1 beer) without suffering a massive headache. Gradually after a couple of years my body recovered its usual flexibility and I am able to eat occasionally up to about 100g of carbs as vegetable, fruit and my two favored "truly essential macronutrients" - ice cream and chocolate.

For me a high fat low carb diet wasn't a road from bad to worse, it was from bad to normal!

I suspect that the reason behind Atkins diet #1 delayed (not immediate) blood glucose deterioration among some patient was his allowance to up the carbs after his initial induction stage. Some patients probably took it too liberaly and coupled with the then much stronger fatophobia than nowadays, may have resulted in overconsumtion of lean protein and carbs.

In my experience on the high fat, which is probably representative to many middle-aged adults ( 43 at that time) , my hormonal imbalance involving insulin resistance, with hypoglycemia and poor glucose regulation persisted throughout the first 1.5 year! Atkins induction period (6m ?) was probably not long enough for people with metabolic syndrome and with diabetes! It certainly was not long enough for me. In the first 1.5 years I could only tolerate 25g of carbs! Which was not a huge problem but I just had to remember to be strict. Whenever I ate more, even 50g would cause me a headache especially if I simultaneously exceeded protein as well! For example, I remember a massive headache I got from a plate full of salmon with potatoes!

Technically my capacity to consume carbs became in that initial period much reduced than before on the high carb diet, therefore technically you could argue that I had "deteriorated" from being insulin resistant to being virtually a diabetic! However, that is purely of academic interest (i.e of useless value) because I RARELY exceeded those 25g of carbs/day, and when I did stuck to those 25g I had absolutely no problem and my health continued improving. That 25g limit didn't bother or worry me at all! For example my intestinal sensitivities and dry eyes syndrome went away with weeks. My mild angina begun gradually abate and I was feeling stronger and more energetic with every passing months. That was the story of the first 1.5 years. Most Atkins patients I guess - would probably bail out during that stage, not understanding why they suddenly feel much worse the moment they add "little" bit more carbs after Atkins unfortunate recommendation!

The second stage of my adaptation to my high fat nutrition occured after 1.5 years. My mild angina completely disappeared, and I discovered that I am no longer carbohydrate intolerant!

I remember how surprized I was when after eating two full bowls of strawberries I did not get any sensations! I no longer would get a headache after drinking wine and especially beer.
...

-----------------

I recommend also to look back at this post Can ketogenic diet cure cancer?, please notice the two papers referenced:

Ketosis leads to increased methylglyoxal production on the Atkins diet.

A brief critical overview of the biological effects of methylglyoxal and further evaluation of a methylglyoxal-based anticancer formulation in treating cancer patients.

____________________________________
References:

*) For example, see the following comments and papers:

1. Beware of the carbs!

However, at least 22 experiments have documented the benefits of reducing the dietary intake of carbohydrates in type 2 diabetics.^2-23 Most of them were controlled studies where a low- carbohydrate diet was compared with a low-fat diet, and almost all of them found that the former was better than the latter as regards weight reduction and glycemic control. In several of the low- carbohydrate groups patients were even able to reduce or stop their antidiabetic treatment.
Most of these studies were ignored by the Cochrane authors because their length was shorter than six months. However, to-day four studies with a length of six months or longer have been published and with similar benefits as in the short-term experiments.^{14, 15, 19, 23}

2. Control of blood glucose in type 2 diabetes without weight loss by modification of diet composition

... A 30:20:50 [P:C:F] ratio diet resulted in a 38% decrease in 24-hour glucose area, a reduction in fasting glucose to near normal and a decrease in %tGHb from 9.8% to 7.6%. The response to a 30:30:40 ratio diet was similar.

Conclusion

Altering the diet composition could be a patient-empowering method of improving the hyperglycemia of type 2 diabetes without weight loss or pharmacologic intervention.

3. Dietary carbohydrate restriction in type 2 diabetes mellitus and metabolic syndrome: time for a critical appraisal

Current nutritional approaches to metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes generally rely on reductions in dietary fat. The success of such approaches has been limited and therapy more generally relies on pharmacology. The argument is made that a re-evaluation of the role of carbohydrate restriction, the historical and intuitive approach to the problem, may provide an alternative and possibly superior dietary strategy. The rationale is that carbohydrate restriction improves glycemic control and reduces insulin fluctuations which are primary targets. Experiments are summarized showing that carbohydrate-restricted diets are at least as effective for weight loss as low-fat diets and that substitution of fat for carbohydrate is generally beneficial for risk of cardiovascular disease. These beneficial effects of carbohydrate restriction do not require weight loss. Finally, the point is reiterated that carbohydrate restriction improves all of the features of metabolic syndrome.

China Study - Raw Data - more plant food = more heart disease!

2010-07-11T10:54:00.012-04:00

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At last! Finally the Raw Data behind the infamous "The China Study..." book by Dr. TC Campbell from Cornell University has emmerged out of some obscure "unobtainium" publication and became available on-line on the Clinical Trial Service Unit at Oxford University web site!

http://www.ctsu.ox.ac.uk/~china/monograph/chdata.htm

Below are the links to blogs and sources.

#1. Denise Minger on China Study - long and in depth analysis of the raw data with graphs. See also her article on Tuoli county the only county in the China Study that consumed a high fat medium carb diet:

http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fallac/

http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/06/23/tuoli-chinas-mysterious-milk-drinkers/

According to our prominent vegan theorists such as Drs Campbel, Ornish, McDougall, Esselstyne et al, the Tuoli people ought to have been very sick or dead. As you can read from Denise analysis nothing is farthest from truth. Tuoli seems to be healthier than in most other China counties!

#2. Fantastic comment by Richard Kroeker on Amazon forum,
- giving his own analyzis of the raw date similar to and corroborationg an analysis by Denise Minger. Note: you should start reading from that post and then move on to #1 above, since Kroeker's article is much shorter.

http://www.amazon.com/Analyzing-the-China-Study-Dataset/forum/Fx1YJPR95OHW08P/TxY4S5EZD8Y2XE/1/ref=cm_cd_dp_ef_tft_tp?_encoding=UTF8&s=books&asin=1932100660&store=books

Quote:

... This is not at all what Campbell's book implied the data said. As I said above, I am an engineer (with a PhD) with heart disease simply trying to find out what to eat. You do the math...

My day-job is analyzing hard drive failure statistics that result from usage and stress testing; I get paid to make the problems being studied "go away". I have also recently had a triple bypass, ...

For instance, the people who ate the most animal protein had 68.9% less heart disease (at 95% confidence) than those people who ate the least animal protein. The people who ate the most plant protein had 64.9% more heart disease (at 89% confidence) than those people who ate the least plant protein.

I am quoting here some interesting correlation (actually the risk ratio between the extreme sample bins for a given variable, '-' means improvement, '+' means harm) from Kroeker's post, the first column numbers are univariate (single-variable, uncorrected against possible confounders) risk ratios in %, the most negative numbers (blue) = low mortality, the most positive numbers (red) = high mortality. The second number in brackets are the "confidence" estimates in % as per Kroeker's definition (see here in his methodology document). This is for mortality of all vascular disease age 35-69.

RISK% (CONFIDENCE%) - INDEPENDENT VARIABLE

-70.7% (93%) - PERCENTAGE OF CALORIC INTAKE FROM FAT
-68.9% (95%) - PERCENTAGE ANIMAL PROTEIN INTAKE
-60.8% (92%) - HDLCHOL plasma HIGH DENSITY LIPOPROTEIN CHOLESTEROL (mg/dL)
-57.0% (89%) - PERCENTAGE OF CALORIC INTAKE FROM ANIMAL
-55.6% (90%) - ANIMAL FOOD INTAKE (g/day/ref)
-55.1% (94%) - FOLATE plasma FOLATE (ng/mL)
-54.8% (89%) - ANIMAL PROTEIN INTAKE (g/day/ref)
-54.1% (90%) - FISH INTAKE (g/day/ref)

-49.5% (84%) - TOTAL LIPID INTAKE (g/day/reference man)
-49.1% (87%) - PERCENTAGE ANIMAL FOOD INTAKE (for refere
-48.4% (83%) - MEAT INTAKE (red meat and poultry) (g/day
-48.0% (83%) - CHOLESTEROL INTAKE (mg/day/reference man)
-46.6% (81%) - RED MEAT (pork, beef, mutton) INTAKE (g/d
-42.2% (82%) - SATURATED FATTY ACID INTAKE (g/day/ref)
-40.7% (89%) - RICE INTAKE (g/day/reference man, air-dry
-38.0% (84%) - TOTAL CAROTENOID INTAKE (retinol equivale
-36.0% (84%) - POULTRY INTAKE (g/day/reference man, as-c
-42.9% (82%) - Se plasma SELENIUM (ug/dL)
-42.8% (85%) - TOTPROT plasma 1989 TOTAL PROTEIN (g/dL)
-42.6% (86%) - APOA1 plasma APOLIPOPROTEIN A1 (mg/dL) (non-pooled analysis
-40.7% (88%) - Zn plasma ZINC (mg/dL)
-38.7% (76%) - B-CAROT plasma BETA CAROTENE (ug/dL)
-38.0% (82%) - ANHYDLUT plasma ANHYDRO LUTEIN (ug/dL)
-34.6% (81%) - TOTCHOL plasma TOTAL CHOLESTEROL (mg/dL)
-34.1% (79%) - NON-HDL plasma CHOLEST.(mg/dL)[=LDL+Trig/5]

...

32.4% (79%) - plasma LDL to HDL ratio
35.6% (75%) - PLANT FOOD INTAKE (g/day/reference man)
37.5% (82%) - POTASSIUM INTAKE (mg/day/ref)
39.3% (76%) - SPICE INTAKE (g/day/ref)
39.6% (84%) - TOTAL NEUTRAL DETERGENT FIBRE INTAKE (g/d/ref)
40.0% (84%) - MAGNESIUM INTAKE (mg/day/ref)
42.2% (80%) - MANGANESE INTAKE (mg/day/ref)
43.0% (90%) - OTHER CEREAL INTAKE (g/day/ref)
46.4% (93%) - TOTAL PROTEIN INTAKE (g/day/ref)
47.7% (91%) - COPPER INTAKE (mg/day/ref)

50.5% (87%) - IRON INTAKE (mg/day/ref)
54.3% (91%) - PERCENTAGE OF CALORIC INTAKE FROM CARBOHYDRATES
56.0% (87%) - PERCENTAGE PLANT FOOD INTAKE
58.9% (95%) - PLANT PROTEIN INTAKE (g/day/reference man)
62.4% (97%) - WHEAT FLOUR INTAKE (g/day/reference man)
64.9% (89%) - PERCENTAGE PLANT PROTEIN INTAKE (for ref)
65.7% (95%) - PERCENTAGE OF CALORIC INTAKE FROM PLANT PROTEIN

#3. Richard Nikoley's blog where I found the original links (thanks):

http://freetheanimal.com/2010/07/t-colin-campbells-the-china-study-finally-exhaustively-discredited.html

Stan (Heretic)

-----------------------------------

Update 13-July-2010

HILLARIOUS response (and also the comment #505 here (*) that is http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fallac/#comment-505 ) by Dr. TC Campbell of Cornell University to Denise Minger!

No discussion of the data, instead plenty of ad-hominem attacks, pointing out her age, questioning her character integrity and weaving some conspiracy theory implying backing by some lobbying organization having "untold financial resources" such as Weston A. Price Foundation! :)

Dr. TC Campbell of Cornell U. (probably) wrote:

"I find it very puzzling that someone with virtually no training in this science can do such a lengthy and detailed analysis in their supposedly spare time. I know how agricultural lobbying organizations do it–like the Weston A Price Foundation with many chapters around the country and untold amounts of financial resources. Someone takes the lead in doing a draft of an article, then has access to a large number of commentators to check out the details, technical and literal, of the drafts as they are produced. I have no proof, of course, whether this young girl is anything other than who she says she is, but I find it very difficult to accept her statement that this was her innocent and objective reasoning, and hers alone. If she did this alone, based on her personal experiences from age 7 (as she describes it), I am more than impressed."

- I am not!
H.

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*) If someone figured it out how to link to a comment by its number, on wordpress blog please let me know. Nothing obvious such as ?comment=505 etc seems to work.

Update 17-July-2010

Reordering and reformatting. It is interesting to notice that in China Study the higher total cholesterol, and the higher LDL+Triglycerides correlated with LOWER cardiovascular mortality; while higher HDL level correlated very strongly with lower cardiovascular mortality!

Update 29-July-2010

Added confidence levels in brackets (%) and a link to Rich Kroeker's methodology document.

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Butter and cream twice as effective as statin

2010-06-19T19:21:00.004-04:00

Relative risk reduction by 49%!

Conjugated linoleic acid in adipose tissue and risk of myocardial infarction

Quote:

Results: Adipose tissue 9c,11t-CLA was associated with a lowerrisk of MI in basic and multivariate models. Compared with thelowest quintile, odds ratios and 95% CIs were 0.80 (0.61, 1.04)for the second, 0.86 (0.64, 1.14) for the third, 0.62 (0.46,0.84) for the fourth, and 0.51 (0.36, 0.71) for the fifth quintiles(P for trend <0.0001). Dairy intake was not associated withrisk of MI, despite a strong risk associated with saturated fat intake [*].

--------------
*) The last sentence is a bul..t of course. There is no extra cardiac risk associated with saturated fat as many other studies such as this this or this have shown.

(JC - thanks for the link)
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Why does Canadian gov...

2010-06-13T21:05:00.005-04:00

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... steal less? Less than other governments! Hope you will enjoy this refreshing point of view, and appologies for straying away from the main blog topics. (feel free to click that box on the right, it's OK. 8-:) )

This discussion begun with Gavin Hewitt's BBC article

------------------------

Stan "Dozent" P. wrote:

You were right, the British papers are much more interesting and honest then North American, BUT...

Quote:

"That is one of the key conclusions of the paper. Since adopting the euro Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain have become increasingly uncompetitive. That and the slowdown in productivity is the heart of the crisis in the eurozone, rather than debt. Debt is a symptom."

No, It is not, pure and simple. Uncompetitiveness is a symptom. Debt is the result of the disease. The Euro is a facilitator, not the root cause. The cause of the cancer is rooted deeper, much deeper. It is true that without the conversion to Euro the massive theft ( or misallocation of capital 8-) ) in Greece and Ireland would not have happened. But a similar story has happened in USA and it is hard to blame it on adopting a dollar. Iceland is in the worse situation then Greece or Ireland yet it does NOT use the Euro! One can not blame it on the Mediterranean culture either. Iceland is a country of tough, hard working people yet it is screwed up just as well.

The root cause is that western elites and governments are indolent and corrupt to the bone. Give the mouse a piece of cheese, he will ask for a glass of milk.

20 years ago Argentina and Brasil went bankrupt. Their liabilities were about 100 Billion. Their popolation 100 million Who the heck lent 120 Billion to Iceland, a country of 300,000 people? Who lent 600 billion to Ireland, the country of 3 million? Greeks did what Bernie Madoff would do if he was a state! Cheated, falsified numbers, and paid bills with new phony money. Who the heck packaged all these Alabama Ninja mortgages into "AAA" securities. Who sold this crap to Icelandic banks? Where did they got the money to pay for it? When you look at it closely, Iceland was used to launder money and they got a commission for doing it.

The establishment, the governments and their paid journalists will invent one reason after another why this crisis happened and continues. This will change nothing Thanks God our Canadian Prime Minister took a bribe of $300,000. He thought it is BIG MONEY. Thanks God another Prime Minister got involved in his friend Golf Course. It cost taxpayers 0.5 million. Thanks to these crooks, our government was paralyzed for 20 years and missed the greatest thieving opportunity of their lives. Thank to them, we can calmly wait until this economic bomb explodes SOMEWHERE ELSE. Explode it will! A few hundred crooks cannot stop 6 billion people who want to live decent lives. Someone, somewhere, sometimes will default on their "obligations" and this whole house of cards will fall apart.

Stan P.

Working notes on cholesterol and diet

2010-06-13T18:44:00.001-04:00

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The following "features/benefits" matrix, represents qualitative risk estimate of heart disease versus total blood cholesterol level (vertically), and versus diet (horizontal). In each cell a value 0(no risk) to 5(very high), would represent a qualitalive heart disease risk based on a subjective estimate. It would probably look like this:

TotChol	V.low fat vegan	med.fat low sugar	med-hi fat hi sugar	hi fat lo carb
high	2	3	5	1
med	1	1	3	0
low	2	3	not happen	1

Disclaimer Note:

This is my conjecture/guesswork based on my my medical literature study. This was constructed as an aid in a discussion with my forum friends. This is not a scientific data, PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE THIS! The numbers are subjective reflecting my belief in the reality rather than the reality itself. They are intended only to illustrate a trend rather than to quantify it.

Please note that I do not believe that the cholesterol level is a causual factor (i.e. causing disease), I believe that it is just a marker thus too high or too low a level may indicate that something else is wrong with the endocrine system, and that "something else" may be contributing to a heart disease.

I do not separate medium fat low sugar from medium fat vegetarian low sugar because I do not believe that vegetarianism per se matters. Rather, I focus on the dietary sugar contents. In my table, the Standard American (and European) Diet would be in the medium-high fat (35-45% calories) high sugar (>10% calories) column. I follow a convention where "very low fat" means about 10%, "low fat" 20% and "medium fat " 30%, High cholesterol is about 250mg/dl or higher, low cholesterol is about 150mg/dl or lower.

I think that rather than asking ourselves "How much fat?", "What fat?", or "what cholesterol?" we should be asking ourselves how much sugar is still safe to eat?.
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Synergistic effect of vitamins A and D

2010-06-07T21:58:00.004-04:00

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Very important article by Chris Masterjohn. Based on the recent Chinese paper using human stem cells in-vitro. The paper demonstrated that vitamin A acts synergistically in triggering expression of neurogenin-3. Neurogenin-3 is necessary for activation of stem cells development, in that case - for replacing the damaged insulin-producing islet cells such as in diabetes type 1.

I think that study is important for several reasons:

- Adequate intake of both A and D3 is one of the critcial factors in tissue regeneration, propably not only limited to pancreatic islets but generally to all other organs,

- Supplementation of only one of the vitamins is inadequate because both act synergistically.

- I suspect (speculating) that beta carotene might not be adequate if vitamin D3 level is low, and vice versa - supplementation of D3 might not be effective in the absence of A. We shall keep in mind that beta carotene (pro-vitamin A) from plants is NOT the true vitamin A! This may explain a curious fact of difficult to treat vitamin A or vitamin D3 depletions frequently reported by vegans.

Argument that MMR vaccines may be harmful ...

2010-05-24T15:52:00.001-04:00

.
... has been recently strengthened by the suspiciously poor quality of the debunking against it! An ongoing controversy about the possible link between measles, mumps and rubella vaccines and autism, has been brought recently to a peak by the disbarrment of Dr. Andrew Wakefield by Britain's General Medical Council announced on Monday. Nowhere in the criticism of his paper, his detractors have openly argued against the merit, logic and science of the actual research. I could not find any statement that would said something like "the paper is wrong because this or that". Instead, Dr. Wakefield's character is being criticized and the conclulsions condemning his study have been reached by the committee, based apparently on some of his procedural and administrative "transgressions". What exactly are Dr. Wakefield's "crimes"?

- ordered research on nine children without his hospital's ethics committee approval. Three of them had invasive procedures they did not need, the statement said. [took blood samples?]

- failed to disclose that the research was being done to test a theory that there was a link between the vaccine and "a new syndrome."

- mislead readers about how children were chosen for the study,...

- ordered investigations on five children while he was at London's Royal Free Hospital, although he was not a pediatrician and his terms of employment said he should have no involvement in the clinical management of patients,...

- accepted 50,000 pounds (currently $72,000) to act as an expert witness in an MMR court case, misled authorities about the payment, and misused half of it, the GMC found.

- had blood samples taken from children at a birthday party - which the panel found "an inappropriate social setting" - without ethics committee approval, paid the children 5 pounds each, and later joked about it in a public presentation, the GMC said.

- Subsequent research has been unable to duplicate Wakefield's findings.

- "Since Wakefield's study came out, some 20 other studies [I am impressed! S.B.] have come out, and each one of these studies, done by different researchers, in different populations and in different countries, has denied the associations between vaccines and autism," he said. "Scientifically, this story is over."

----------- update (24/05/2010) ------

An interview with Dr. Wakefield can be heard on BBC - 1h47m to 1h57m into this programme .
and here is a short video interview. Thanks Lee.

---------------------------------------------------

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. Jiddu Krishnamurti

Gamma radiation protects against cancer, in low doses?

2010-05-21T23:00:00.008-04:00

.
Cancer mortality reduction by 97% - huge! Is it true? Hormesis?

Paper:
"Effects of Cobalt-60 Exposure on Health of Taiwan Residents Suggest New Approach Needed in Radiation Protection", W.L. Chen et al., Dose Response. 2007; 5(1): 63–75,

Quote:

... serendipitous contamination of 1700 apartments in Taiwan with cobalt-60 (T_1/2 = 5.3 y). This experience indicates that chronic exposure of the whole body to low-dose-rate radiation, even accumulated to a high annual dose, may be beneficial to human health. Approximately 10,000 people occupied these buildings and received an average radiation dose of 0.4 Sv, unknowingly, during a 9-20 year period. They did not suffer a higher incidence of cancer mortality, as the LNT theory would predict. On the contrary, the incidence of cancer deaths in this population was greatly reduced-to about 3 per cent of the incidence of spontaneous cancer death in the general Taiwan public. In addition, the incidence of congenital malformations was also reduced - to about 7 per cent of the incidence in the general public. These observations appear to be compatible with the radiation hormesis model.

Figure 1 from the same paper. Click to magnify and hires.

More readings:

1. by D.W.Miller, MD: Afraid of Radiation

2. Keeping the Lights On

3. by William R. Ware, Ph.D.: Low-Dose Radiation Exposure and Risk of Cancer

4. Caroline Hadley: "What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger", Nature, EMBO reports VOL 4 | NO 10 | 2003

5. Bernard L. Cohen: "Test of linear no threshold theory of radiation carcinogenesis for inhaled radon decay products", University of Pittsburgh 1994

Fig 1a from Cohen's paper

To annoy anti-nuclear environuts: Letter...

More refs added (02-Mar-2011):

6. Rheumatology 2000;39:894–902;
"Long-term efficacy of radon spa therapy in rheumatoid arthritis—a randomized, sham-controlled study and follow-up"

7. Int.J.Low Radiation,Vol.1,No.4,2005; "Nuclear shipyard worker study (1980–1988): a large cohort exposed to low-dose-rate gamma radiation"

see also John Cameron's (one of the study author) write-up here

Quote:

In 1980, the US Department of Energy (DOE) gave a contract to the School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University to study radiation risks to nuclear shipyard workers. This study, which extended for more than a decade, cost the taxpayers $10 million. This was the World's best epidemiological study of nuclear workers. The study has yet to be published more than 12 years after its completion in early 1988.
...
The reader may think that the nuclear shipyard study is contradicted by other human studies. I know of no contradictory studies. One other radiation worker study--the British radiologists study. (Smith and Doll 1981)-- also looked at the death rate from all causes. It gives results consistent with NSWS. (Table 2.)

Eating less processed meat and more poultry, fish reduces cancer

2010-05-21T22:06:00.004-04:00

.
New cancer-diet study, just being published in AJCN:

"Meat, fish, and ovarian cancer risk: results from 2 Australian case-control studies, a systematic review, and meta-analysis."

Results from 2 case-controlled studies were combined and presented (see blue numbers below), and separately, a combined meta-analysis from 7 additional studies was also presented (red numbers). Bulleted conclusions are as follows:

No association (within statistical significance) of red meat consumption with ovarian cancer.
Women with the highest intake of processed meats had +18% and +20% more ovarian cancer.
Women with the highest intake of poultry had -17% and -10% less ovarian cancer (statistically borderline).
Women with the highest intake of fish had -24% and -16% less ovarian cancer.

-------

As I am with this topic, here is some more nutritional heresy. Enjoy.

"Health Benefits of a Low-Carbohydrate, High-Saturated-Fat Diet"

written by cardiologist
Dr. Donald W. Miller, Jr.

I could not help noticing how similar, no - virtually identical are mine and his interests and views, except that he has been enjoying his life assignment 15 years earlier, before me. I strongly urge readers to read all Dr. Miller's articles on his website!
.

Refined Carbohydrates, not Fats, Threaten the Heart - Official!!

2010-05-01T13:47:00.001-04:00

(From Wikipedia)

Spot the junk bits!

Scientific American Magazine - April 27, 2010

Title: "Carbs against Cardio: More Evidence that Refined Carbohydrates, not Fats, Threaten the Heart"

Quotes:

...compared the reported daily food intake of nearly 350,000 people against their risk of developing cardiovascular disease over a period of five to 23 years. The analysis, overseen by Ronald M. Krauss, director of atherosclerosis research at the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute, found no association between the amount of saturated fat consumed and the risk of heart disease.

... Stampfer’s findings do not merely suggest that saturated fats are not so bad; they indicate that carbohydrates could be worse. A 1997 study he co-authored in the Journal of the American Medical Association evaluated 65,000 women and found that the quintile of women who ate the most easily digestible and readily absorbed carbohydrates—that is, those with the highest glycemic index—were 47 percent more likely to acquire type 2 diabetes than those in the quintile with the lowest average glycemic-index score. (The amount of fat the women ate did not affect diabetes risk.) And a 2007 Dutch study of 15,000 women ... who were overweight and in the quartile that consumed meals with the highest average glycemic load, a metric that incorporates portion size, were 79 percent more likely to develop coronary vascular disease ...

Another issue facing regulatory agencies, notes Harvard’s Stampfer, is that “the sugared beverage industry [and vegetarians, my comment - H.] is lobbying very hard and trying to cast doubt on all these studies.”

... Some monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, such as those found in fish and olive oil, can protect against heart disease. What is more, some high-fiber carbohydrates are unquestionably good for the body. But saturated fats may ultimately be neutral compared with processed carbs and sugars such as those found in cereals, breads, pasta and cookies.

“If you reduce saturated fat and replace it with high glycemic-index carbohydrates, you may not only not get benefits—you might actually produce harm,” Ludwig argues. The next time you eat a piece of buttered toast, he says, consider that “butter is actually the more healthful component.”

Stan (not-so-Heretic)

.

Cheese - reduced risk of incident and fatal cancer

2010-04-25T20:52:00.004-04:00

.
New European EPIC study , just published.

24 thousand participants, over 10 years, 28% reduction in cancer mortality, mostly associated with prostate and lung cancers. Only dairy (not vegetable) source of vitamin K had any effect.

Quote:

24,340 participants aged 35–64 y and free of cancer at enrollment (1994–1998) were actively followed up for cancer incidence and mortality through 2008. Dietary vitamin K intake was estimated from food-frequency questionnaires completed at baseline by using HPLC-based food-composition data.

Results: During a median follow-up time of >10 y, 1755 incident cancer cases occurred, of which 458 were fatal. Dietary intake of menaquinones was nonsignificantly inversely associated with overall cancer incidence (HR for the highest compared with the lowest quartile: 0.86; 95% CI: 0.73, 1.01; P for trend = 0.08[*]), and the association was stronger for cancer mortality (HR: 0.72; 95% CI: 0.53, 0.98; P for trend = 0.03). Cancer risk reduction with increasing intake of menaquinones was more pronounced in men than in women, mainly driven by significant inverse associations with prostate (P for trend = 0.03) and lung (P for trend = 0.002) cancer. We found no association with phylloquinone intake[**].

Conclusion: These findings suggest that dietary intake of menaquinones[**], which is highly determined by the consumption of cheese, is associated with a reduced risk of incident and fatal cancer.

My comments:

*) Accepted threshold for "significance" is P<=0.05 that is probability of the result being by chance are less or equal than 5%. P=0.08 means that the total cancer incidence results were also close to being significant, with the probability of being false of 8%.

**) Phylloquinone is the form of vitamin K (K1) that is present in plants. Menaquinones are forms of K2 present in non-plant food sources such as meat, organ meat and dairy (MK-4) or some types of yeasts (MK-7, MK-9).

It is interesting to reflect at this stage at the infamous "The China Study" book by Dr. T.C. Cambpell from Cornell University. For many years Campbell has been claiming that cheese (specifically caseine) supposedly caused cancer in his experimental mice and it was also presumed to be certain, according to him, to cause cancer in humans. Countless of vegans must have used Campbell's book to justify avoiding all dairy products.

Now it turnes out that the China Study must have been a mistake. Some people like Chris Masterjohn, have been pointing that out in the past, to no avail probably due to high academic credibility of the book author. (*)

False knowledge seems to be more harmful than no knowledge.

Heretic

_______________________________

References:

Am J Clin Nutr. 2010 May;91(5):1348-58. Epub 2010 Mar 24.
"Dietary vitamin K intake in relation to cancer incidence and mortality: results from the Heidelberg cohort of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC-Heidelberg)."
Nimptsch K, Rohrmann S, Kaaks R, Linseisen J.

http://www.westonaprice.org/1799-Cure-for-Cancer-Activator-X-May-Be-the-Missing-Link-1799.html

http://blog.cholesterol-and-health.com/2010/01/weston-prices-activator-x-cure-for.html

http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com/index.html

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/03/are-mk-4-and-mk-7-forms-of-vitamin-k2.html

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/06/vitamin-k2-menatetrenone-mk-4.html

-------------------------------------

*) Updated 12-July-2010 - see also this post .

Running causes heart attacks

2010-04-14T23:37:00.001-04:00

.

12% of marathon runners were found in a German study to have suffered heart atacks versus only 4% among the age-matched control subjects.

This is important! You have to read more about it on Kurt's blog here and there . (Thanks for bringing this subject!).

It turns out that marathon runners not only carried more frequent traces of past myocardiac infarction events, than the average age-matched population, but also had 62% more atherosclerotic plaque as showed in this research. The true extent of atherosclerosis among runners is likely to be even higher than that, because the control group in that study wasn't random. It was selected from among patients undergoing the same scan for symptomatic or suspected heart abnormalities.

Has there ever been a study on marathon runners using a diet other than high carb?

.

Carbohydrates increase women's heart risk

2010-04-13T18:42:00.001-04:00

.

New large Italian study published in Archives of Internal Medicine is described on the BBC Health web site.

A study of over 47,000 Italian adults found that women alone whose diets contained a lot of bread, pizza and rice doubled their heart disease risk.

After seven years, 463 participants had developed coronary heart disease.

The researchers found that the women whose diet had the highest glycaemic load had more than double the risk of heart disease compared with those women with the lowest glycaemic load.

The authors concluded: "Thus, a high consumption of carbohydrates from high-glycaemic index foods, rather than the overall quantity of carbohydrates consumed, appears to influence the risk of developing coronary heart disease."

This is somewhat contradictory since the GlycemicLoad concept being a product of Glycemic Index times daily intake in grams, does include all types of carbohydrates not just those of the highest glycemic index. Also, the fact that the correlation showed up among women but not men is a bit suspicious.

Last but not least, there is no mention of "artery-clogging" fat! I wonder why?

.

Money matters

2010-04-10T12:53:00.006-04:00

I am glad to present another interesting essay written by Dozent (Stan P.), this is a continuation on the subject of Baby Boomers culture (that we fondly refer to as "Monkeys"), this time discussed in the context of economy and money. I hope you will enjoy it.

-------------

Stan (Heretic) wrote Re:

I found that being too "business"-obsessed in the sense of seeing monetary rewards in everything is also a sign of a "monkey". The reverse is probably also true. Real people want to be paid real money but they (we) are not too obsessed with it. Playing games with monetary reward, that is withholding it when due and rewarding arbitrarily when it is not warranted, is _their_ signature.

Stan,

I always knew it and I have acted upon it.

What is money (I mean real-money) ? It is equivalent of work or in other terms a rechargeable work-battery :-)

I like to work. It is normal. Why should I be obsessed with WORK. If you can not make money then you do work nobody wants. But the problem is: you NEVER KNOW what will sell.

A few years ago I found your "marketing research.on your sensors a little funny, but "harmless" so I said nothing. Simply estimating the potential size of the market is a good thing. But that as far as I would go.

I know "if the product WORKS for me then it will most likely work for others".   I veered off topic. "Monkeys" are obsessed with money because they can not do any useful work. For them money is NOT an equivalent of work. No wonder they print it - they can not not see the equivalence. They either "hustle" money or receive it for being loyal to the boss. They can not earn it on the open work market because they have no marketable skills. They can not make things other people need. They are obsessed wit it because it is their constant problem.

Mind you, this definition automatically defines who is a "human" [in our sense] and who is a "monkey" [figuratively, not literally, in a cultural sense, S.B.].    The critical words are "what people need".

It means that a singer like lady Gaga is a human being because she creates something "people need" and are willing to pay for.   It means she is working for her money. It is a kind of work you and me do not understand, but we can not be Astronauts either.

The definition of "useful work" is that is has a "monetary value" on the market. Loyalty and arse kissing does not have a monetary value on the market though it does have value to the Top Monkey and is rewarded accordingly. However, nothing has been created neither by loyal followers nor the boss. The money, being an equivalent of work must be stolen by a form of "taxation" or simple extortion.

This defines instantly the role of the government. What government creates ? Services ? What services ? No, the only "product" government "creates" is SECURITY. Mind you, it is a marketable product and people are willing to pay for it.   Providing security is a full time job.
Now what is a value of a well equipped army. That depends. If you are facing Hitler or Genghis Khan, nothing else matters.   The problem is a professional army could not stop Hitler. If fact, it was wiped out and proved completely useless. In the end a few million of regular folks had to leave their stores, their factories, their fields, they had to learn to fight and they kicked ass.

So the security it is not worth 50% of MY EARNINGS.   If it is, it is time to make weapons and go to war.

There is a reason why the "monkeys" do not understand the connection between work and money.   For them, there isn't any. No matter how hard they "work" ie talk, go to meetings, make noise and other efforts nothing happens.

There is no product, no buyer, no sale and no money.

Now we can go back and create some definitions.

[Goods and Services]

To state the obvious: people need things. In order to survive people need goods and services like food, shelter, clothing, tools etc...     These goods have to be made. For the sake of efficiency and quality work specialization is required so most of the goods we need is made by other people. By definition services are provided by other people. Primeval societies "found" things they needed. There was a very high "intrinsic" component in goods. We hunted land animals and fish, collected nuts, dug roots, used wood, bone, native gold, obsidian and flint. With few exceptions like fish we have exhausted the available supply of things we could find. Now ALL the goods have to be made by human labor.

[Trade and Economy]

The second factor is an economy of scale. It was difficult to kill an animal to catch a fish or to make a bow. It was even more difficult to produce "high tech" product like a bronze axe or a gold ear-rings. It required a skill and a know how. Once the smith made first good axe, it was easy to make 10 or 20 more. Then one could trade them for some beautiful sea shells :-)      You know I am serious there. Trade is as old as humankind.   What was the first trade?   Well, the Bible is probably right: a woman exchanging sex for food though a Snake had nothing to do with it!

[Money, Value, Currency and Fake Value ]

Trade started as barter. Money was invented later to facilitate the exchange.   Money is a concept. It is a measure of "value" humans attach to goods and services.   Value is the desire of humans to "own" or "consume" goods and services.   However, money has an weakness. It needs a medium to be implement in practice. A medium like sea shells, iron bars or gold and silver.   The medium has to be convenient to carry, indestructible, difficult and expensive to produce, impossible to fake, easily recognizable and uniform (that is why diamonds are not money).    It has to have value to humans but it can not have any utility value so it will not be destroyed.    It has to be rare and expensive but not too rare nor too expensive.

The only medium of exchange that survived the centuries is gold and silver.   Over time, gold and silver has become money though it does not have any use and little utilitarian value.

Gold and silver money has serious flaw - the supply is limited by the availability of metal. However, this is alleviated by increasing the velocity of money and creating credit.   Velocity of money is a fancy name for reuse.   A buys from B, B buys from C etc... the same money facilitated multiple transactions.

Credit is a legal note created by a creditor, and backed by his tangible assets.   It is an obligation to buy back the note after the prescribed time for the principal plus interest. This obligation must be enforced by law.   Money is an equivalent of labor. It works like a rechargeable battery.   It "stores" human labor in a convenient form for later consumption.   However, people rarely need a pure human labor like the "professional" services of a doctor or lawyer.   In most cases we need "goods" ie. things which have been made by labor. The labor itself is hidden from consumer in the "value" of these goods.   The value of the "product" is a measure of a desire of people to consume it.   Thus, "money" is an equivalent of goods and labor and a store of value ie. desire to consume.

Credit is equivalent of work to be done in the future by the debtor in exchange for money borrowed from the creditor.   To account for the risk to the creditor the borrower has to pay interest.

Currency is a credit note issued by the government as a legal means of exchange.   In theory, the government promises to buy it back at any time for money. The government is a debtor, the saver is the creditor. It is a cheap credit as the government does not pay interest [or very little of it].   Money can not be easily created.   It has to be saved and pooled to create capital.

Money is an asset and will hold value for as long as people desire gold and other rare objects.

Currency is a piece of paper. It has value as long as the government says it does. This "value" can be wiped out with one stroke of a pen. Currency is someone's liability. It holds value only as long as the issuer is credit-worthy and can pay back its debt..

Gold Rubles and gold Krugerrands are money . The Reichsmarks were currency. It lost all real value on 9-May-1945.

In the mid 20 century something curious had happened - currency had become "money".   The liability has become an asset. The piece of paper acquired value backed by the creditworthiness of entire nations. It is not the first time it has been tried. The kings of France tried this. The kings of England tried this. The results were rather sorry - the kings lost their heads. The current massive experiment lasted 70 years for over 3 generations. One could think it was successful, but the fraud was just so big it took a very long time for the results to first appear. Now the cows are coming home. The currency will go to zero again, but that is a subject for another essay.

This simple definition of "money" and "currency" has a very far reaching consequences. First, it provides a clear distinction between human producers and parasitic consumers. Second, it provides a clear distinction between money and currency. Third, it clearly defines the role of the "government".

There are many people who have no skills or no desire to produce anything. Yet they need the manufactured goods and services in order to survive.   I call them "Monkeys" because just like the monkeys they tend to congregate into troupes and many are actually destructive. The critical statement is this: since Monkeys do not make anything they can not "earn" money. They have to steal it or extort it. They congregate in groups of alike individuals and use agression to hustle a living.
The Currency is NOT money. It is a piece of paper. It obfuscates the role and the very nature of money as a deferred labor. It enables the incompetent, destructive "monkeys" to pretend they also create "value".

However, currency is designed and promoted as the equivalent of money thus the equivalent of labor but unlike labor, it can be printed at will.   It makes "credit" cheap.   After all, all it takes is to print a piece of paper. It makes savings an oxymoron.   The banks do not need savings to issue credit. Sooner or later credit printing gets out of control and the whole fraud unwinds. We are witnessing it now.

The only products government can manufacture and sell is law and security. Personal security. It is a legitimate role and a legitimate products. In fact, it is priceless. Laws permit economies to function. It enables property ownership and civility.   Personal security is the first step to political freedom which has been proven to promote wealth creation.

This has become a book. The real point can be made starting here with the "Monkeys" taking over the government in the times of prosperity and the replacement of money with currency. The system starts rotting from the top and the disaster is unavoidable.

I have no desire to write this book. I know you know the end. We both know the resulting cycle is very long. In fact, this may well be the explanation of the Kondratiev's super-wave. There has to be a longer cycle - about 3-4 generations. In short, the cycle starts with competent people and real money and it ends with "Monkeys" in charge and worthless paper currency.

See you tomorrow.
Stan P.

(Text in brackets [] and quotes added by Heretic)
--------------------------------
Update 24-April-2010.
More comments posted on this subject, see under the previous article.

Veg prevent cancer bullxxxx exposed

2010-04-08T22:18:00.000-04:00

.

European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition report by BBC

Professor Walter Willet of Harvard University said the research strongly confirmed the findings of other studies, showing "that any association of intake and fruits and vegetables with risk of cancer is weak at best".

and this:

The study of 500,000 Europeans joins a growing body of evidence undermining the high hopes that pushing "five-a-day" might slash Western cancer rates.

The international team of researchers estimates only around 2.5% of cancers could be averted by increasing intake.

Healthy vegetables? Yeah right!

Human regression, anthropology

2010-04-02T00:49:00.013-04:00

"Grok" the Neanderthal (drawn by Cecylia Bleszynski)

This is a continuation of the previous post on the subject of present day human regression, problem with "Baby Boomers" generation etc.

I have been thinking of expanding it into an essay but I am not quite sure how to attack it. As far as I know it has never been postulated this way. It has probably never been said that certain traits and attributes of the modern human culture such as social uniformity and an obedience towards authority in power and regulations, may in fact be the symptoms of regression into our distant evolutionary past. It is important to recognize it since it may harm our long term survival.

On the first sight that may sound like a pure anarchic heresy. I need to explain. During our relentless discussions and rants (me with Dozent), we realized that there is a behavioral pattern, namely people who tend to be the most willing followers of hierarchy of power, who like obeying all regulations spread by governments, corporations and churches, are the same who have unusually well developed group social skills, and at the same time tend to lack the skills that defined our humanity in the past. The same type of people also lack certain human skills that used to ensure our survival, that is: innate creativity, ingenuity, ability to manipulate or adapt to changing environment, high mobility and tendency to build strong bonds within the small teams of equals based on skill and usefullness rather than on some hierarchy of authority and power.

I will describe some basic differences between the characteristic of nomadic humans the way I see it, in contrast to the opposite traits of the so-called "Baby Boomers". Please keep in mind that use the last term in a simplistic generalized way, to described a certain subculture.

"Nomadic"	"Boomers"
individualists	collectivists
disobedient	followers
adaptive, flexible	static, rigid
racially blind	intolerant of strangers
value creativity	afraid of new
dislike static order	value stability
rely on individual work	work unconnected to wealth
authorities = problems	authorities = source of wealth
strong team bonds	strong social group bonds
manipulate environment	manipulate people
technical and science skills	lack of technical abilities
logic and math	verbal reasoning and rhetorics
observe what works	observe what others say
individual survival priority	group has priority
idealizes religions	uses religions
support commerce	consider it unfair profiteering
nomadic mentality	settled mentality
highly focused on 1 task	multitasker

-----------------
Update 24-April-2010
More comments by Dozent posted on this subject, see below.

-----------------
Update 8-Feb-2011
Added last row in the table.

External debt of Ireland falls to €1.61 trillion

2010-03-31T21:11:00.002-04:00

According to todays' Irish Times article. Population of the Republic of Ireland is 4.5M.

Quote:

Ireland’s external debt continued to fall, standing at €1.61 trillion at the end of December 2009, a decrease of €26 billion compared with the end of September. The figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) include general government, the monetary authority, financial and non-financial corporations and households. ... Credit institutions and money market funds had debt of €661 billion at the end of last year, a fall of close to €30 billion compared to three months earlier, and a decline of €107 billion compared to a year earlier. However, general Government foreign borrowing rose €2 billion to €75 billion between the end of September and December 31st 2009 as new long-term debt securities were issued, off-setting redemptions in short-term securities. Compared to a year earlier, it was €17 billion higher. Intra-group borrowing and fluctuating exchange rates accounted for a rise in direct investment debt liabilities of €10 billion to €210 billion.

My comments:

It will take 31 years to pay back 1.6Teu at that rate providing that Irish institutions and households find enough assets to pay all that. There are many questions, I am curious as to who the creditors are? British? Germans? Why did they lent so much to a country with no assets other than property they were lending for? If most of that was backed up by property, that is clearly under water now, since the 50% property price drop in 2007-2009. How could an island nation of 4.5M people own 1.6Teu worth of properties to back that all up? How long (maturity) are those liabilities? Does Ireland really own that much in backup assets or is most of that 1.6Teu really unsupported by anything other than a promise to pay it back? That would be roughly 1Meu per family/household! Iceland's case springs to my mind.

High plasma AGE and platelet hyperaggregability in vegans

2010-03-28T18:27:00.000-04:00

.
More deficiencies have been shown (than just B12,A,D3,K2,EPA,DHA) to be inherent in vegan diets. Taurine supplementation may be necessary for some vegans. Taurine is amino-acid not present in plants, and can only be obtained from animal produce.

1) Sub-optimal taurine status may promote platelet hyperaggregability in vegetarians.

Quote:

Plasma taurine levels are lower, and urinary taurine excretion is substantially lower, in vegetarians than in omnivores. Platelets are rich in taurine, which functions physiologically to dampen the calcium influx evoked by aggregating agonists--thereby down-regulating platelet aggregation. Supplemental intakes of taurine as low as 400 mg daily have been reported to markedly decrease the sensitivity of platelets to aggregating agonists ex vivo.

2) The low-AGE content of low-fat vegan diets could benefit diabetics - though concurrent taurine supplementation may be needed to minimize endogenous AGE production.

Quote:

Nonetheless, the plasma AGE content of healthy vegetarians has been reported to be higher than that of omnivores - suggesting that something about vegetarian diets may promote endogenous AGE production. Some researchers have proposed that the relatively high-fructose content of vegetarian diets may explain this phenomenon, but there so far is no clinical evidence that normal intakes of fructose have an important impact on AGE production. An alternative or additional possibility is that the relatively poor taurine status of vegetarians up-regulates the physiological role of myeloperoxidase-derived oxidants in the generation of AGEs - in which case, taurine supplementation might be expected to suppress elevated AGE production in vegetarians.

3) A taurine-supplemented vegan diet may blunt the contribution of neutrophil activation to acute coronary events.

Quote:

Taurine has anti-atherosclerotic activity in animal models, possibly reflecting a role for macrophage-derived myeloperoxidase in the atherogenic process. Taurine also has platelet-stabilizing and anti-hypertensive effects that presumably could reduce coronary risk.

Vegetarian Bantu have worse CHD markers than non-vegetarian!

2010-03-07T11:53:00.001-05:00

I could not resist re-posting this pearl (thanks Peter):

Lancet. 1996 Sep 21;348(9030):784-8. "Blood pressure and atherogenic lipoprotein profiles of fish-diet and vegetarian villagers in Tanzania: the Lugalawa study."

Quote:

INTERPRETATION: In these villagers, consumption of freshwater fish (300-600 g daily) was associated with raised plasma concentrations of n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, lower blood pressure, and lower plasma lipid concentrations.

Heretic's translation:

Vegetarianism sucks.

overvalued currency is government's fault

2010-03-06T11:18:00.001-05:00

Dozent wrote:

Please note the fact that when currency is overvalued everything is expensive, is totally counter-intuitive. When the currency is very strong the imports should be cheap. Like the $30 microwaves. But it applies to so few products it is not even funny.

Exactly! That's what misled me too. It is very counter-intuitive! A simple minded false logic would dictate that a country with overvalued, too strong currency like Ireland in the 1980-ties and 90-ties, should have been flooded with cheap food and cheap industrial good from abroad.

The truth is that it does not work like that at all! The primary factor missing from the logic which in fact CAUSES the currency to REMAIN overvalued is the government! I did not understand it but it is the most important: - Irish government made possible for the Punt to REMAIN overvalued for so long, indefinitely because they simply blocked the cheap import through import and excise duties and siphoned off the excessive cash through punitive income tax!. Had Irish gov not done that everybody would have simply bought computers, would ate only imported food and the currency would have collapsed within 3 months!

Food was too expensive in Ireland because imports were heavily taxed and farmers had to recoup their overvalued labor costs with appropriate pricing, where as the consumers had no choice.

There is one manipulation necessary to drive a currency high above par value (for example pushing bond yields up) and there are other necessary conditions that must be manipulated by centralized government in order for the currency to remain overvalued rather than correcting immediately through trade imbalance. Actually Americans accomplished the second part (preventing overvalued dollar from collapsing) not by taxation and customs like the Irish gov (they couldn't tax outside of the US borders!) , but by managing to sustain the permanent trade imbalance - by balancing the real trade of goods and service with fake printed papers that the other countries like China treated as if these were real goods with value! (*)

Under normal free market system a poorer less developed and less industrialized country like Ireland (or Portugal - another prime victim of Dr. Salazar's monetary manipulation theory) could not have possibly maintained an overvalued currency at al! Irish Punt would have been worth not 2$ in the 80-ties, but 1$ and living expenses in Ireland would have been LOWER , not higher than in W.Germany! As it should have been, as it is in Poland right now. That's why Polish economy is not doing worse but better than German, French or Swedish in spite of the different levels of development.

Stan

-------------------------------------------

*) We know that the US$ will probably collapse only when the trade imbalance balance will rectify itself using real goods and services that real people really need in real life, that have real value priced on the real market! As long as China, Japan and EU buy US Bills and Bonds, the US$ will have to remain overvalued!

Does red meat give you bowel cancer or hacked email disease?

2010-02-20T11:53:00.001-05:00

It's an enigma - nobody knows the truth

Professor Tim Key
Oxford University

BBC Health -Does red meat give you bowel cancer?

Why do I get the same kind of feeling reading about the supposed perils of meat as when reading about the recent "Global Warming" flap. Omitting non-conforming evidence? What's the problem since "we know that we are right anyway...".

Quotes:

The WCRF says the evidence that red and processed meats increase the risk of colorectal cancer is "convincing",...

...The WCRF has published a list of "minor errors" with the report - some relating to the findings on red meat and bowel cancer - but says it has no intention of altering the conclusions based on an expert panel's review of the scientific literature.

...
But there have already been clashes within the pages of the leading scientific journal on diet and disease.
In a letter last year to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Professor Stewart Truswell of the University of Sydney questioned why several large studies which found no link had been discarded by the panel , and also pinpointed errors in the reporting of data.

Pass that steak then, bring veggies? Well not quite yet:

The European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition-Oxford (EPIC-Oxford), which followed 65,000 people during the 1990s, found that far from being protected from bowel cancer as anticipated, vegetarians in fact displayed a slightly higher incidence of this form of the disease.

Enjoy your food 8-:)
Heretic

More on Fat and CHD - no correlation!

2010-01-16T15:14:00.003-05:00

No statistically significant correlation between saturated fat and coronary heart disease!

Another meta-study was published by NZ authors recently on this subject:

"Dietary Fat and Coronary Heart Disease: Summary of Evidence from Prospective Cohort and Randomised Controlled Trials", C. Murray Skeaff , Jody Miller, Ann Nutr Metab 2009;55:173–201 Published online: September 15, 2009
See also the previous blog posts on the same topic by Peter and Chris M.on Krauss' meta-study , about saturated fat and Coronary Heart Disease.

Dr. William Davis' postprandial atherogenic particles hypothesis

2010-01-04T05:12:00.000-05:00

See the following comment and Dr. Davis' response. What do you think?

Baby boomers' monkey business

2009-11-28T13:20:00.006-05:00

What do the following terms have in common: Ardipithecus, monkeys’ social habits, high sugar + cereal diet, Lipitor™, vegetarianism, environmentalism, political collectivism, herd mentality, break-down of family values, excessive focus on entertainment, business-destroying corporate management based on consensus not competence, de-industrialization, engineering decline and medical science failure?

I am going to expand upon that. Existence of some connection in the above listed items was originally postulated by Stan Piotrowski (aka "Dozent") in response to my theory explaining the strikingly (to me) consistent social habits and culture of the generation of people born just after WWII (1940-ties to 1950-ties), in Europe (West + East) and N.America. My theory postulated reincarnation of some ancient technologically-inept collectivist-minded differently-logical people into the midst of our modern technology-based individualistic civilization. On the other hand, Dozent's theory replaced my metaphysics with pure biology, evolution, genetic programming, and atavistic fallback to the social behavior from our very distant evolutionary past.

Here is Dozent’s theory in a nutshell, in his own words:

Recently you have told me that the looters are cavemen. You are wrong. Totally, utterly wrong. If anything, WE are cavemen. We eat meat. We hunt. We build fires and spears. [....]

To explain my thesis I have to go back to the first time I have seen a TV program on "Ardi" - the earliest known humanoid. Ardi walked upright and had small teeth. Just like us. He wasn't aggressive. He was a hunter and gatherer. Males brought food home and shared life with a female. Females choose good providers and husbands, not an aggressive unattached types. The teeth are a proof of it.

Chimps and Gorillas went the other way. We don’t descent from monkeys, Ayn Rand didn’t know that. Apes are a different evolutionary line which rewarded strength and aggression. The big gangster type. Large gun and no respect for his woman. Ardi was not a chimp-like creature. Neither was "Lucy" the Australopithecus. They did not look like an ape and they did not behave like an ape. We can see it from the results. From the size of our bodies, our teeth, our testicles and our penises. They all point to one-to-one stable relationship. Not based on aggression and sex.

If we were like apes, women would have a red protruding behinds and the men would be twice as big with very large teeth and very aggressive sexually driven behavior.

This observation has eluded me for years.

Back to my thesis. The looters are not cavemen. They are Chimps. Mini-skirts and large half-naked breasts are an equivalent of big red arses. Big guns and motorcycles are equivalent of large canines. Aggression and submission are dominant behavior. Everyone tries to be an Alpha dominant male, a "silverback". They can't work. They don't think. They drink beer (carbs) and eat cereals (carbs). They behave like Chimps not like Cavemen. They look like Chimps, they talk like Chimps and behave like Chimps. They are Chimps.

This is a discovery which eluded me. You do not try to befriend a chimp. You stay away and so does he. You do not try to appease an aggressive chimp. […]

This is not arrogance. This is not "I am better then them" etc... I may not be better I am different. I am a Human. They are Chimps.

The most popular movies right now are all about vampires. Vampires are creatures who live among humans look like humans but behave like..., yes you have guessed it, Chimps. You can call them Chimps or you can call them vampires. You do not call them Cavemen. That is offensive to my noble ancestors who lived in natural caves before they learned to build artificial "caves". They did it so as to protect their children and family from the environment.

They also dressed up in animal skins to be warm not undressed up to show their canines and biceps or their red arses. That was before they have learned how to make an artificial skin called fabric. Yes, caves were rare and they had to be shared. They had names, individuality and respect for the skills. They cared for their families, their children, their parents and their friends.

Stan, Cavemen were US, not THEM.

Stanislaw P., a human.

Will C++ destroy Microsoft Corp.?

2009-10-25T18:06:00.010-04:00

The last 2 weeks of struggle to install my wife's "Simply Accounting 2008 Premium Student's Ed." (SA) by Sage, on Windows XP convinced me that the answer has to be positive.

Problem.

The package installer program would crash at the end of installation. Event Log showed that the crashes were due to a missing class, message issued by CLR module from the .NET2 framework. Turns out SA was compiled using Visual Studio 2005 and uses .NET2 but some changes after 2005 (most likely .NET3.5 or some service packs) broke the compatibility. It's not just one application problem. Apparently, the same happens to Microsoft SQL Server 2005 on a fully upgraded and fully service-packed WinXP Pro. It hangs or crash on install, except when installed on a fresh un-upgraded WinXP.

Solution.

Think about Linux then uninstall in this order: .NET3.5, .NET3.0, then .net-sp2, then unistall .NET2 . If uninstallation fails at any of the stage use dotnetfx_cleanup_tool.zip (from Microsoft web site). Get rid of all .NET down to .Net1.1. Turn off automatic upgrades. Re-install .NET2 using dotnetfx_Net2.exe from Microsoft web site. Reboot. Reinstall application program. Think about Linux again.

Conclusions.

1. .NET framework issued with Visual Studio 2008 appears to break old applications that use .NET2.

2. With C++ being Microsoft's language of choice, .NET framework was introduced by Microsoft to overcome C++ inherent flaw - it's inter-modular binary incompatibility. Clearly that does not seem to be working very well. However C++ does work very well for Linux/Unix OS where applications are distributed as sources and binary incompatibility does not matter! In short: C++ + GPL = sucess, C++ + $$$ = failure!

3. Microsoft is probably not using .NET for it's own new applications, so shouldn't we either!

Microsoft used to tout like crazy ASP.NET and all .NETx.x plus a small herd of other impossible to remember acronyms like WPF etc, from every media outlet. I believe that they may have already quietly scrapped all that new Application Programming Interface garbage! Ever tried installing Internet Explorer 8 without the latest .NET3_3.5? It works like a charm, no problem! I wonder what was the truth behind the rumors of their Vista development "Reset" (code scrap & re-write) in 2005? Is that only my nagging heretical suspicion that it may have had something to do with a hypothetical major flaw in their .NET framework?

4. I have seen the future and it might just work... My view on Objective-C and C++

5. Think about Linux...

Beware of Okinawa Diet scam!

2009-10-16T19:11:00.018-04:00

I thought Okinawa Diet case has been rightfully forgotten a few years ago but a recent post on webmd Diet Debate board tries to revive it by linking this article , quote:

...Okinawa Centenarian Study. Okinawa, a chain of islands in southern Japan, has the highest concentration of centenarians. Uniformly these old folks have a vegetable-based, low-calorie, low-fat diet and exercise daily. They eat on average seven servings of vegetables and seven servings of grain per day, several servings of soy products, fish rich in omega-3 fatty acids, and little dairy or red meat.

My comment: I have come across Okinawa Study and the popular books by Willcox et al. a few years ago and came to a conclusion that it is totally bogus and a scam designed to sell their books, diet plans, supplements etc.

Here is what what do Okinawans probably eat, from WAPF web article :

And what do Okinawans eat? The main meat of the diet is pork, and not the lean cuts only. Okinawan cuisine, according to gerontologist Kazuhiko Taira, "is very healthy-and very, very greasy," in a 1996 article that appeared in Health Magazine.19 And the whole pig is eaten-everything from "tails to nails." Local menus offer boiled pigs feet, entrail soup and shredded ears. Pork is cooked in a mixture of soy sauce, ginger, kelp and small amounts of sugar, then sliced and chopped up for stir fry dishes. Okinawans eat about 100 grams of meat per day-compared to 70 in Japan and just over 20 in China-and at least an equal amount of fish, for a total of about 200 grams per day, compared to 280 grams per person per day of meat and fish in America. Lard-not vegetable oil-is used in cooking. Okinawans also eat plenty of fibrous root crops such as taro and sweet potatoes. They consume rice and noodles, but not as the main component of the diet. They eat a variety of vegetables such as carrots, white radish, cabbage and greens, both fresh and pickled. Bland tofu is part of the diet, consumed in traditional ways, but on the whole Okinawan cuisine is spicy. Pork dishes are flavored with a mixture of ginger and brown sugar, with chili oil and with "the wicked bite of bitter melon."
--------------

19. Deborah Franklyn, "Take a Lesson from the
People of Okinawa," Health, September 1996, pp 57-63

I also found my old post containing some information from Barry Groves (private communication), see what he had to say:

-------
Okinawa (by Heretic on Aug-08-06, webmd)

I am trying to get hold of some papers on the subject. So far I found, surprisingly (or may be not...) that there is just as much confusion about it and contradictions in the literature, as about infamous "The China Study"(*). When I get the article text I will post some quotations. It will require a trip to the local uni library and paying some $$$. Let me quote after Barry Groves (private communication), the following citation:

In 1992 scientists at the Department of Community Health, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology, Japan published a paper which examined the relationship of nutritional status to further life expectancy and health status in the Japanese elderly[1]. It was based on three epidemiological studies. In the first, nutrient intakes in ninety-four Japanese centenarians investigated between 1972 and 1973 showed a higher proportion of animal protein to total proteins than in contemporary average Japanese. The second demonstrated that high intakes of milk and fats and oils had favourable effects on ten-year survivorship in 422 urban residents aged sixty-nine to seventy-one. The survivors revealed a longitudinal increase in intakes of animal foods such as eggs, milk, fish and meat over the ten years. In the third study, nutrient intakes were compared between a sample from Okinawa Prefecture where life expectancies at birth and sixty-five were the longest in Japan, and a sample from Akita Prefecture where the life expectancies were much shorter. It found that the proportion of energy from proteins and fats were significantly higher in the former than in the latter.

Reference
1. Shibata H., Nagai H., Haga H., Yasumura S., Suzuki T., Suyama Y. Nutrition for the Japanese elderly. Nutr & Health. 1992; 8(2-3): 165-75.

-----------------

Update 9-Nov-2009

Description of Okinawa food:

http://stanford.wellsphere.com/healthy-eating-article/hara-hachi-bu-lessons-from-okinawa/845480
Quote:

Animal Foods, Seafoods, Fat and Okinawa Cuisine
Traditional foods of Okinawa are extremely varied, remarkably nutrient-dense as are all traditional foods and strictly moderated with the philosophy of hara hachi bu. While the diet of Okinawa is, indeed, plant-based it is most certainly not “low fat” as has been posited by some writer-researchers about the native foods of Okinawa. Indeed, all those stirfries of bittermelon and fresh vegetables found in Okinawan bowls are fried in lard and seasoned with sesame oil. I remember fondly that a slab of salt pork graced every bowl of udon I slurped up while living on the island. Pig fat is not, as you can imagine, a low-fat food yet the Okinawans are fond of it. Much of the fat consumed is pastured as pigs are commonly raised at home in the gardens of Okinawan homes. Pork and lard, like avocado and olive oil, are a remarkably good source of monounsaturated fatty acid and, if that pig roots around on sunny days, it is also a remarkably source of vitamin D.
The diet of Okinawa also includes considerably more animal products and meat – usually in the form of pork – than that of the mainland Japanese or even the Chinese. Goat and chicken play a lesser, but still important, role in Okinawan cuisine. Okinawans average about 100 grams or one modest portion of meat per person per day. Animal foods are important on Okinawa and, like all food, play a role in the population’s general health, well-being and longevity.
Fish plays an important role in the cooking of Okinawa as well. Seafoods eaten are various and numerous – with Okinawans averaging about 200 grams of fish per day.

------

More links (07/06/2010): Okinawa - The Island of Pork

Note (updated 18/12/2011): Unfortunately the link above with its lovely photo of a market stall filled with pork to the roof, has gone kaput. Enjoy okinawa-information.com instead. Quote:

Pork is a very important ingredient, and every part of the pig is used, from pig's feet and pig's ears to pork tripe. Other ingredients include local seafood and native tropical vegetables and fruits.

Update 21-Oct-2010 (from Denise Minger comments on her blog)

Nutr Health. 1992;8(2-3):165-75. Nutrition for the Japanese elderly., Shibata H,et al.

Abstract quote:

The present paper examines the relationship of nutritional status to further life expectancy and health status in the Japanese elderly based on 3 epidemiological studies. 1. Nutrient intakes in 94 Japanese centenarians investigated between 1972 and 1973 showed a higher proportion of animal protein to total proteins than in contemporary average Japanese. 2. High intakes of milk and fats and oils had favorable effects on 10-year (1976-1986) survivorship in 422 urban residents aged 69-71. The survivors revealed a longitudinal increase in intakes of animal foods such as eggs, milk, fish and meat over the 10 years. 3. Nutrient intakes were compared, based on 24-hour dietary records, between a sample from Okinawa Prefecture where life expectancies at birth and 65 were the longest in Japan, and a sample from Akita Prefecture where the life expectancies were much shorter. Intakes of Ca, Fe, vitamins A, B1, B2, C, and the proportion of energy from proteins and fats were significantly higher in the former than in the latter. Intakes of carbohydrates and NaCl were lower.

Food Choices and Coronary Heart Disease

2009-10-14T20:22:00.009-04:00

Barry Groves published today a note on his blog about this new study. The most interesting are certain heretical conclusions such as, quote:

Daily intake of fruit and vegetables was associated with a lower risk of coronary heart disease when combined with a high dairy fat consumption (odds ratio 0.39, 95% CI 0.21-0.73), but not when combined with a low dairy fat consumption (odds ratio 1.70, 95% CI 0.97-2.98).

It is noticeable that the odds ratios are highly significant, by a large factor, namely 61% lower risk for high fat and 70% higher for low fat consumption! By high/low fat the authors meant this:

Low consumption of dairy fat was defined as milk with 1.5 percent fat or less, no butter and seldom or never intake of cream. All others were denoted high consumption of dairy fat.

However, the real harbinger of low fat diet doom is table 4 (click on the picture to magnify):

I strongly suggest to print it out and stick it on a fridge!

Finally, the following heretical, no - an outright subversive paragraph found its way into the end section. Please understand that I am in a state of shock [aaaah] - you are looking at the paper published in the mainstream peer-reviewd scientific journal. Quote:

In the prospective population-based Malmö Diet and Cancer Study, total fat and saturated fat were not associated with cardiovascular events [14]. Evidence support harmful effects of trans-fatty acids on coronary heart disease, but there is insufficient evidence of associations between saturated fat and heart disease [3]. We lack a clear understanding of the complex effects on health of fats in relation to other components in dairy products [32,33]. A recent review and meta-analysis of 15 cohort studies of vascular disease and milk and dairy consumption found lower relative risks of stroke and/or heart disease in subjects with a high milk and dairy consumption relative to the risk in subjects with low consumption [34].

The only way to fix GM is to close it down...

2009-09-22T09:23:00.003-04:00

The news is that Canadian GM management has decided to increased salaries for non-unionized white collar (read - management) employees. A few months ago all the employees "white" and "blue" took up to 10% pay cut, now it seems they are restoring only the white collar salaries, but not the blue-collar hourly wages! The original pay cut for everyone saved the company 50M$ a few months ago. This pay restoration now will cost the company similar amount of 50M$ dollar. The ratio of white collar (=management) to workers in Canadian GM is 1700:7500. Those numbers indicate that the "pay restoration" will actually amount to a significant pay increase for the management, probably four times their original pay cut. It is also possible to calculate the average manager's salary...

Source: Peterborough Examiner 19-Sep-2009

Living to 115 on crispy bacon

2009-09-14T10:41:00.002-04:00

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-gertrude-baines12-2009sep12,0,6915924.story

Quote:

Gertrude Baines dies at 115; the world's oldest person
...
All the while, Baines slept away in her robe, now and then breaking from her routine of crispy bacon, Jerry Springer and church services to take interviews.

What did really cause the crash?

2009-08-19T20:00:00.007-04:00

Just a speculative thought:

- could the drop in the Asian stock markets in 2008 preceding the banking crisis of September 2008, have been the real main cause of the crash rather than the American property decline?

US property is only about ~30% down from the peak where as many Chinese companies and the stocks are down way more than that!
Since the US financial oligarchy decided to pump virtually all of the new investment into Asia, since mid 1990-ties and especially after the dot com crash in 2000, the US industry has been totally starved of investment. Yet the US dollar is strong since the banking hub is in the US thus the system works exactly as in the past, generating enough profit to compensate. The manufacturing industries that backs the financial sector and the dollar, are still there owned by the financial elite the same way as before, except that the new factories have been now relocated outside of the US borders.

This situation seems very similar to the British Empire days when before the WWI Britain was investing ~100Bstg a year abroad, while the paper assets were held in London. Around early 1900-eds British pound was the world universal currency and London was the world financial hub generating enough profit to keep the pound strong, and they did not have to produce anything since they could buy everything cheaply abroad. During that time British manufacturing industry experienced its deepest decline in history, and British investors experienced some difficulties in repatriating Indian Railways and Suez Canal back to London, after 1945. They didn't have any "greenshoots" until 1980.

-------
09/09/2009

I should have titled it "What will really cause the crash?"

Any major natural disaster in China may now push the Chinese stock into a crash and consequently the US financial system over the edge. One (my) prediction of an upcoming gigantic wind damage and flooding in the Pearl River Delta, Hong Kong - Shenzhen - Guangzhou area springs to mind.

-------
What was the primary cause?

I have a theory: - US government was giving huge quantity of TBonds in return for foreign currency loans that they then used to sell off on the Forex market, to weaken other currencies and thus strengthen the US $. I think it is very plausible! It explains for example why does European Central bank and BOE hold huge TBonds reserves in spite of a relatively small size of their trade with the US!

I believe that this currency manipulation was the PRIMARY cause and the trade imbalance with China and Japan was just a SECONDARY consequence of the weakened currencies.

Most experts postulate that the trade imbalances happened first and the TBonds were exchanged as the result of those imbalances. I think it was the other way around! Trade imbalances do not appear by themselves, rather international trade of goods and services tends to balance itself out automatically, if left free.

Managed health "care" ...

2009-08-02T18:03:00.000-04:00

.. or social engineering + eugenics + population control?

You listen, then decide:

Jim Puplava's Financial Sense Newshour scroll down to 1 august 2009, 3-rd hour part 2, or:
media player stream
mp3
pdf by Mathew Staver

Dairy cuts mortality by 25% and strokes by 60%

2009-07-28T19:13:00.000-04:00

BBC Health: Dairy for children 'extends life'

Quotes:

Some 4,374 UK children from a 1930s study were traced 65 years later by researchers in Bristol and Queensland.
...
Despite dairy containing artery furring fat and cholesterol, high consumption did not raise the heart disease risk.
...
The study looked at family diets and found higher intakes of both calcium and dairy, predominantly from milk, cut mortality by a quarter.
...
A higher daily intake of calcium, of at least 400mg as found in just over half a pint of milk, cut the chance of dying from stroke by as much as 60%.
...
Joanne Murphy of The Stroke Association said: [...] "In the meantime, we advise parents to opt for a diet rich in fruit and vegetables and low in saturated fat and salt for the overall health of their children."

Vitamin K2 halves the risk of all-cause mortality and aortic calcification!

2009-07-10T19:07:00.001-04:00

... with the relative risk reduction factors in the highest vitamin K2 tertile of 0.42 and 0.48, respectively.

Dietary Intake of Menaquinone Is Associated with a Reduced Risk of Coronary Heart Disease: The Rotterdam Study

(after Richards' blog - thanks!)

Does vegan diet weaken bones?

2009-07-05T22:45:00.004-04:00

A recently published pre-anounced study report postulated that vegans have somewhat (marginally) lower bone density than non-vegans.

I just noticed Dr. McDougall's response to it that totally cracked me up! Basically he is saying that a paper by the same author that he previously quoted, has shown no difference in bone density among vegan nuns vs non-vegans (which Dr.McDougall calls "favorable"!!!) therefore it has to be right whereas the present pre-announced paper by the same author now does show some differences unfavorable to the vegans, therefore the author must have been corrupted by some Malaysian dairy corporation. I am not making that up, you can read his response yourself here.

If a plant based nutrition is supposed to be good for the bones, according to Dr.McDougall, how come that his own staff lecturer should wear a weighted vest or backpack to maintain his bone mass?

A digression: that study states as a side note that 5% of the Western population are vegetarian, which makes me wonder how come that there is no mention of vegetarians among centenarians here or mention only a tiny 0.35% fraction in that study - perhaps they don't live very long?

--- updated 23/09/2009 ---
Another interesting study (thanks JC):
"Effect of vegetarian diets on bone mineral density: a Bayesian meta-analysis"