A quick note: I’ll be appearing live tomorrow on Weight Loss Guru Radio with host Pete Cohen. The show will be at 3 pm Eastern time / noon Pacific / 8 pm London time, and can be heard on Blogtalkradio here.
Pete is a London-based talk show host and his previous guests include a broad range of interesting people, many outside the Paleo community but also such familiar names as Gary Taubes, Mark Sisson, Zoe Harcombe, and Sean Croxton. Check out his prior shows here.
UPDATE: Pete mentioned that he liked our recipes and Shou-Ching’s photo art, which can be found here.
via this link:
Thank you so much for your research you have done and your wonderful book!! 20 years ago i was240 lbs now 168. I have gained 12-13 lbs in o little over a month on perfect health diet and Do not know what I am doing wrong. I was Paleo all those years but never ate rice and the things you advise. By the way my son has been on Paleo for 6 months now and we have taught him about diet and nutrition for years now and now does not understand about adding these extra safe foods to this new regime. I have been having problems with chest pains, blood clot in leg, pain is arms, pain in thyroid, tumor in uterus, constant constipation, etc. Would love your comments and could we meet and consult at your convenience? My good friend and family also follow your regime. I just spoke with a doctor friend and told him to look you up and to start following your regime. But before we meet can you help me? I also have pain in kidneys and bladder infections alot, urinating alot (been for many years). I was a premie weighed 2 lbs at birth with ear, lung infections, and other things I have had 2 major head injuries and have memory loss also. I am trusting God for my healing and believing you can help me too. Can you please answer all my dilemmas with your comments. God bless you and your wonderful wife. My best to both of you!!!
Dr. Jaminet can you please reply with your comments to my comments above. I really appreciate and love your hard work you have done for all of us. Hoping to meet and consult with you.
Hi Donna,
It’s difficult to give advice over the Internet for how to heal such a broad range of longstanding health issues; I have to leave most of that to your doctor. I do think the strategies and tactics described in our book will help.
What I can help with is implementation of our diet. If you describe specifically what you are eating, I can suggest improvements. Also the circadian rhythm tactics in Chapter 42 are important.
Best, Paul
Dear Paul, Can you please call Silvia Provenza @412-828-9542 so she can set up a speaking engagement as soon as possible. Thank you so much for your time and consideration. Sincerely, Donna Kollmar Speak with you later about my issues
We need to contact you asap in regards to a speaking engagement, we would like you to speak and certainly want you to bring your book and this is a book buying group of people that are looking forward to hearing you. Can you please contact me very soon @ 412-828-9542 Silivia Provenza is head of the Freedom of Choice and National Health Federation in America. Looking forward to hearing from you soon! Thank you, Donna Kollmar 724-337-7340
Hi Donna,
I didn’t see this until rather late tonight. If you email me tomorrow we can arrange a time to speak.
Best, Paul
Dear Paul I will email you tomorrow and set up a date this month for the speaking engagement. Thanks for your reply and appreciate your answer!! Sincerely, Donna Kollmar Talk tomorrow
I meant, send me an email and we can talk by phone so I can find out what you have in mind. pauljaminet @ perfecthealthdiet .com
Paul can you please call my friend Silvia Provenza, I need to talk to you also but she would like to schedule the speaking engagement soon! Hope it all works out and we will get to meet and talk. Please contact her @ 412-828-9542 tonight that is her home phone. I really appreciate you and so want to talk. Sincerely, Donna Kollmar
Paul do I just use this site to email you right here? Thanks, Donna Kollmar I will hopefully see you and talk with you soon.
Hi Paul,
I enjoyed this interview very much. Thank you for the great work you do. You’re a big inspiration to me. There was one subject that wasn’t related to health, but which I found particularly interesting, on which unfortunately the interviewer interrupted you during your talk. Here’s what you said:
“One reason I’m no longer in science is that I’ve always been sort of a generalist. When I was in physics, I was in it for eleven years and by the time I left I had completed three research cycles on the same basic problem. Unfortunately once you’re like the world leader in one specialty you can continue to get funding to work on that, but you can’t get funding to work on anything else because there’s always somebody who’s the world leader in that. So science is very specialized nowadays and frankly it was kind of boring. So although I’m not employed as a scientist now I sort of think of what I do as science, but it’s more science from the earlier day when scientists were amateurs and could range freely over whatever interested them.” – Paul Jaminet
You said that you’re a generalist in science. Well, I’m a student myself and I love science very much in the same way you do. I was thinking that becoming a scientist would be the perfect way for me to earn an income so that I would be able to continue doing what I love. What you said during the interview however has made me realize that that’s not true at all.
I would be very grateful if you could expand a little bit more on this subject or if you could give any advice for someone who is very passionate about science in general like you on finding a way to keep doing what he/she loves without having to become a close-minded, bored, specialized scientist.
Hi Erik,
Well, it is difficult to give advice, but if you love science and have a talent for it then I think it’s worth pursuing. If in the end you leave as I did, it will be because you’ve found something better.
It is difficult to avoid specialization but if you find a dynamic field, which biology still is, there are always new problems. Having a broader perspective helps you attack problems from different angles than your peers, so may give you a competitive advantage.
Just be aware that being a true scientist who discovers knowledge, and making a successful scientific career, are two different jobs — and both are full-time jobs. Scientific institutions are bureaucratized today and reward things other than the pursuit of knowledge. So if you want to do both, you will have to work very hard, but without any sacrifice of health/sleep/diet/exercise because both are marathons that depend on good cheer, enthusiasm, and superb mental and physical health.
You need never become close-minded; that is entirely in your control. You must develop a specialty, but you can have many of those, having one doesn’t prevent you from thinking about other things, but any research conducted outside your specialty will have to be conducted without money. Boredom is more a result of what field you go into — one that has become sterile, like physics, or that requires huge sums of money to make new discoveries like astronomy, is more likely to induce boredom than a field like biology where small-scale science is possible and much remains unknown.
Hi Paul,
Thank you so much for your advice. I think it’s wonderful that you’ve managed to leave your scientific career behind to become a true scientist who discovers knowledge that helps many people. It’s very inspiring.
I’m not very interested in making a successful scientific career, I just want to keep learning and expanding my knowledge, so that hopefully I’ll be able to contribute something of value to the world like you and Shou-Ching are doing.
am i missing something, i think if PHD allows 100 cal. from fructose then 13 tsp. of sugar would be okay?
one thing that immediately comes to mind that you might be missing is the opportunity cost associated with getting your 100 calories of daily fructose from sugar. wouldn’t that mean you’d have to reject all other sources of fructose, such as berries, potatoes, carrots, beets, squashes, etc.., along with all of the other nutrients they offer, in order to stay under the 100 cal. limit?
remember, its not only about avoiding toxicity, but also about achieving nutrition. there’s a balancing game. i wonder if getting all of your daily fructose from straight up sugar would harm your ability to balance?
Hi Herb,
No, because plant foods have fructose. Beets, carrots, fruits, berries, etc. If you eat an appropriate amount of plant foods there’s no room for added sugar.
I was just wondering, if for some reason one didn’t eat plant foods if that would be okay.
The amount of fructose might be acceptable but you’d be missing a lot of valuable nutrients from the plants.
Currently reading and really enjoying your book! One thing that caught my attention was a reference you used in Chapter 19.. reference 41 regarding IgA nephropathy and wheat germ agglutinin. I went to the reference and it’s actually an editorial.
http://jasn.asnjournals.org/content/2/10/S173.long
Here is the link to the actual research article supporting your statement.
Thanks bjj. I’ll put that in the errata when I get a chance.
Hi Paul, there is a new theory that red meat is bad for us because of the TMAO, do you have any comment on that?
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/health/study-points-to-new-culprit-in-heart-disease.html
Hi David,
Well, it’s interesting, but I’m a bit skeptical. First, seafood is probably the richest source of TMA / TMAO (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trimethylamine_N-oxide, it is what gives old fish the fishy smell), not beef. Second, beef appears to be quite healthy in recent epidemiological studies, and so is seafood. Third, TMA and TMAO are normal break down products of choline which is an extremely abundant molecule in the body, so it should be something we evolved an ability to handle.
I think this is more likely to be a problem in people who don’t eat a diverse diet, so they don’t have bacteria feeding on vegetables and potatoes to keep the beef-metabolizing bacteria down in number. “The presence of specific bacterial taxa in human feces was associated with both plasma TMAO concentration and dietary status.” (http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nm.3145.html) — I think this is a key line from the abstract. TMAO in blood may be a marker & toxic byproduct of overgrowth of a bad bacterial population.
Also, “Chronic dietary l-carnitine supplementation in mice altered cecal microbial composition, markedly enhanced synthesis of TMA and TMAO, and increased atherosclerosis” — I haven’t read the full paper, but I bet we would find that the amounts they supplemented the mice were quite large, much larger than would be contained in dietary meat.
I think if you’re eating a balanced diet, enough carbs so you don’t eat excess meat, and more plant foods than meat with beneficial types of fiber, I doubt the amounts of TMAO are going to prove dangerous.
Just my guess.
Is it implicit in your comments that one should use caution in supplementing with L-carnitine or, for that matter, choline? The last sentence from the abstract of that study reads, “In mice with an intact intestinal microbiota, dietary supplementation with TMAO or either carnitine or choline reduced in vivo reverse cholesterol transport. Intestinal microbiota may thus contribute to the well-established link between high levels of red meat consumption and CVD risk.” http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nm.3145.html
These are all great points Paul.
Fish is meant to be this great heart-protector. Acetyl-carnitine extends lifespan in mice; whatever that means, it certainly doesn’t kill them.
They seem to be assuming that a (probably slight) reduction in reverse cholesterol transport will result in increased CVD, but that might depend on how the reduction is caused.
They are also assuming that the correlation between meat and CVD is proven. If so it’s very weak, and there’s a stronger correlation with processed meat. Which is likely to be lower in carnitine?
Also, a wholefood diet of legumes, nuts, seeds, greens etc could be significantly higher in choline than a diet of burgers and buns.
“Plasma L-carnitine levels in subjects undergoing cardiac evaluation (n = 2,595) predicted increased risks for both prevalent cardiovascular disease (CVD) and incident major adverse cardiac events (myocardial infarction, stroke or death), but only among subjects with concurrently high TMAO levels.”
High carnitine levels can be seen in other diseases in which mitochondria are dysfunctional, and are not derived from diet. Conditions as diverse as schizophrenia and liver cirrhosis feature increased carnitine expression.
I wonder if they separated the effect of TMAO from that of bacterial LPS.
The bacteria possibly metabolizes carnitine to deny it to other bacteria that would otherwise use it in their mitochondria.
I wonder if anyone today remembers homocysteine? History is littered with these reductionist attempts to isolate a single chemical as the dietary cause of CVD. Good on them for trying to prove it’s a bacterial product; Elie Metchnikoff’s ghost is smiling on them.
But as for the NYT’s reporting;
ROFLTMAO
So, watching granddaughter’s tennis match (she lost but moved wonderfully – she’ll get there) and shared small talk with her mom about needing to decide on a farmer as source for pastured beef. She said they are rethinking beef because of the article you folks are discussing.
Once home, I googled and decided on Bulletproof’s take on all this. It’s not pubmed but he makes some very interesting points.
http://www.bulletproofexec.com/the-red-meat-scapegoat-the-new-york-times-carnitine-heart-disease-and-science/
When trying to lose weight, weigh yourself daily. Numerous studies have shown that stepping on the scales on a regular basis, can help a person lose weight. A recent study determined that those who logged daily and weekly weigh-ins lost 12 to 18 pounds more, than those who checked their weight less frequently.
I can’t recommend the Hacker’s Diet Online site (it’s free) enough for tracking your weight every day. It’s made by the creator of autocad, and uses fancy math to calculate a trending weight. You can see within a day whether you’re on or off track:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/online/
thank you very much i hobe to lose my weight
Thanks for the awesome radio, I am a constant listener to your show and I enjoy listening it.