Thank you to all readers who have helped out on the Q&A thread! I have been exceedingly busy and am still behind on some important obligations, so it is difficult to find time to answer questions. But I do intend to respond to everyone’s questions. I’m grateful to those readers who are sharing their knowledge to help others.
[1] Paleo Summit starts tonight:
Sean Croxton’s Paleo Summit begins at midnight tonight with presentations by Mark Sisson and Diane Sanfilippo. Presentations are free for 24 hours, when a new set of presentations appears. The summit will continue until interviews with 23 speakers, including myself, have appeared.
There is a Summit Upgrade package of videos, audio files, transcripts, and bonuses that will go on sale Tuesday.
It’s a mini-Ancestral Health Symposium, but without the travel. I understand that 14,000 people have already registered. Check it out!
[2] Music to read by: The Seekers perform “I’ll Never Find Another You” in 1993:
Judith Durham’s voice is as lovely as ever, and she looks fantastic. Compare how she looked in the 1960s:
Nowadays when I see someone who’s aged gracefully I wonder what her diet is like.
[3] Raw Milk Debate: I was privileged to attend a recent debate over raw milk at Harvard Law School (site of the upcoming Ancestral Health Symposium), featuring Sally Fallon Morell of the Weston A Price Foundation and three others, two on each side. All of the panelists were great and the debate was excellent. And it’s available on video:
[4] Interesting posts this week:
I was in New York for a business trip on Thursday and was able to stop by at CrossFit NYC to talk to some of their members. John Durant was there and mentioned my ranking of the different meats in his Friday post.
Good news for Court Wing, head trainer and co-owner at CrossFit NYC: walking speed is a good indicator of future lifespan.
The Daily Mail wonders why today’s women are developing gray hair in their 20s. Michael A Smith wonders whether tyrosine can reverse it.
The New York Times reports on a study showing that the aging eye blocks blue light, so that the elderly need more sunlight and blue light to maintain their circadian rhythms and health.
Chris Kresser asks: Is chlorine in shower water making you sick?
Huffington Post reports that BPA’s Obesity And Diabetes Link Strengthened By New Study.
Gregory Cochran: Doctors aren’t innovators and don’t generate new knowledge.
J Stanton informs that some Japanese with yeast infections get drunk from rice; in extreme instances blood ethanol concentrations may reach fatal levels of 80 mg/dl or almost 1% blood alcohol concentration.
Seth Roberts explains what Richard Bernstein taught the world.
ScienceDaily reports that Vitamin D up to a serum 25(OH)D level of 50 ng/ml helps reduce inflammation.
Fight Aging! reports that stem cell transplantation extends lifespan in mice.
Bix reports that glycogen in the brain is increased by exercise.
Prof Dr Andro says that slower weight loss works better. We argued that in our book also. Focus on health first, weight second, and you’ll lose weight more successfully.
Peter Janiszewski reports that food reward is self-regulating: The more you eat something, the less you like it.
Julianne Taylor has lost an inch from her waist and improved her Raynaud’s. Paleo Pepper has benefited from adding carbs to her diet: “Since adding carbohydrates to my diet– call me crazy– I’ve been less sickly. The acne scars on my face heal much more quickly than they used to. Most importantly, my breasts and hips have gotten larger, and my thighs a bit I guess, but my stomach has stayed flat flat flat. How nice is that?”
Greatist.com has released an infographic, The Ultimate Guide to Eating Paleo.
Coming soon: Test-tube meat.
Via Newmark’s Door, “How Cancer Drugs Make Cancer Worse and Kill Patients.”
In North Carolina, a child’s homemade lunch was seized and the child forced to buy chicken nuggets because her lunch didn’t comply with Federal guidelines.
In a post relevant to my conversation with the Peat-atarians, Stephan Guyenet asks whether fructose sugar can cause obesity. His answer:
[H]igh-sugar diets don’t necessarily produce body fat accumulation in humans, and they can even allow body fat loss under some circumstances, but are there situations where sugar can cause fat accumulation? The answer is an emphatic yes….
[E]xcessive consumption of refined sugar can promote elements of the metabolic syndrome, and this is due specifically to its fructose content.
Fortunately, Stephan projects that US sugar consumption won’t reach 100% of calories until 2606.
Good news for pet lovers: Cats can serve as blood glucose monitors.
[5] Cute animals:
Via Aravindan Balasubramanian.
[6] The competition is heating up: Hitler has decided to start a Paleo blog:
(Via Stabby.)
[7] How the brain ages: A fascinating plot at Marginal Revolution:
[8] Not the Weekly Video: I hope this Chinese candy artist is using safe sugars!
[9] Shou-Ching’s Photo Art:
[10] Weekly video: We might as well wrap up the pork series with evidence that pigs will eat almost anything:
± I.M.F. ± from PlusqueMinusque on Vimeo.
Via Naked Capitalism
via this link:
Your weekend posts are always so interesting! Full of informative links and resources; thank you so much!
That candy art is fantastic! Now it’s all I want to eat. The trends Stephan presented with didn’t factor in new and totally awesome ways to prepare sugar; I predict that we’ll hit 100% sugar much sooner if this keeps up.
The cat story and candy art are both fantastic! Thanks!
Regarding gray hair, although male, I have it since my 20s. And I can tell you that the probable reason so many young woman have it these days is hypothyroidism (what you canno’t associate with thyroid, uh?!!):
http://pmid.us/17961449
“In North Carolina, a child’s homemade lunch was seized and the child forced to buy chicken nuggets because her lunch didn’t comply with Federal guidelines.”
It wasn’t and they didn’t.
Have you seen http://perfecthumandiet.us/ ? There’s another PHD.
Judith Durham…”she is a committed vegetarian and has eaten no meat, chicken, fish, seafood or eggs since 1968″ -from her web site
She has always been fanatical with her diet to try to “control mucous” as she was always struggling with bronchiectasis (a chronic cough that started when she had measles as a child). I remember seeing many years ago that she recommended Arnold Ehret’s Mucusless Diet System (published 1922)
I’ll stick to PHD, thanks.
Hi Mario,
I agree. I’ve been thinking of doing a gray hair post.
Hi Nigel,
Yes, looking forward to seeing the movie.
Hi Shelley,
Too bad! Looks like she’s aged a bit recently: http://media.stylespress.com/auscon/people/judith-durham-200×248.jpg.
Born July 1943, so would have been 50 in 1993, 68 today.
i’m inclined to think that hypothyroidism is linked to grey hair because of copper deficiency in both….
She looked great at 50. What a remarkable change in 19 years. Then again, she is almost 70.
I’m glad Stephan wrote that sugar post as it makes it clear to me that real sugar is not all that bad. As far as “graying” is concerned I agree with Mario. The thyroid is paramount to most everything. This was the whole point that I feel you missed regarding your discussion with Danny. Also, mineral deficiencies probably play a role in losing hair color, namely copper. It would be interesting to parse through the sugar studies yielding MetSyn signs. I wonder what confounders exist.
Hi Gabe,
How did I miss anything in regard to Danny? Eating more carbs raises T4 to T3 conversion but that doesn’t cure hypothyroidism and there’s no reason to believe it’s beneficial, if the reason it’s happening is to dispose of an excess of carbs. If high carb diets were a cure for gray hair, I’m sure people would have noticed.
Paul, if your do a gray hair REVERSAL post, I will write you in for President.
For the record,I started going gray in my young 30s, had a normal thyroid test in mid 30s, diagnosed hypothyroid at 40.
Folks at Earth Clinic promote a blackstrap molasses concoction for “repigmenting” hair, the idea being that premature gray can be from copper deficiency.
+1 for a gray hair post, and ideas for reversal. i am female, and started going gray in my mid-20s and lots of my friends did too.
i have noticed that some of my gray hairs are growing in dark (I have brown hair) at the root now. But only a very small number of grays are doing this so far. Still, there’s hope!
Hi Paul,
Wow, your sentence and Seth Robert’s blog makes it sound as though Bernstein has passed (i.e., the use of the past tense “taught”), to me anyway.
I went careening around the web and can only conclude the good Doc is still very much with us; I see he has a Feb 29 teleseminar. Whew!
FWIW, first gray hair at 20 or so. Have no idea of my thyroid status at the time.
Have a great time with the Summit!
Best, KKC
uh, all my siblings start graying at early teens like 12. it runs in the family. 🙁
(i enjoy the cat story)
regards,
My mom’s (born 1941) been doing PHD for a couple of months now, and her white/gray hair has started growing in dark in spots.
I never mentioned high-carb curing gray hair? I commented that it may be related to mineral deficiencies and possibly an overabundance of certain amino acids in the diet. Also, there was no mention of high-carb “curing” hypothyroidism. I also feel it is a bit narrow to interpret an increase in conversion of T4 to T3 singularly to “dispose of excess carbs”. It almost seems as if you are concluding that increased T3 is undesirable at times. If thyroid function is a principal arbiter of health, then why wouldn’t we try to find novel ways to increase it’s abundance in the body. Also, isn’t T3 required for the conversion of cholesterol to pregnenolone in the mitochondria? It would seem that one might want to enhance this conversion to benefit from further metabolism of pregnenolone to progesterone, testosterone, DHEA, etc.
PeterC that’s interesting! Does your mom attribute it to any part of the program? Does she have an inkling that PHD addressed a particular deficiency or problematic food/food group? Long shot, I know, as PHD probably introduced a whole host of changes for her, as it did for me.
Hi Peter,
That’s terrific! My best wishes to your mom.
Hi Gabriel,
Increased T3 is undesirable at times, that’s why hyperthyroidism is a disease. There’s an optimal amount and either higher or lower is bad.
Many factors influence T3, but each factor may have an optimum. That’s the case with carbs. Going above optimal carb intake in order to influence T3 may not improve overall health, even if T3 is low; and it may even raise T3 above optimal.
Paul – Great presentation on the Paleo Summit. I am starting PHD with the aim of reducing weight (becoming a little leaner) and overcoming some adrenal issues. I was wondering if you have any suggestions for any specific tests to take to assess health now, which I could then redo in a few months to assess progress? I know there is an aspect of just feeling better, but I would be interested to know if there are other measurable ways of assessing improvement.
Appreciate your work!
Forgot to mention – the cookbook you are both working on as outlined in the Paleo Summit presentation, sounds great. I’ll be buying!
Hi Caroline,
I would assume you have already had the main tests done, if you know you have adrenal issues. Thyroid and blood lipid panels are probably the most useful routine diagnostic tests. If weight loss is a concern, thyroid / TSH is something to monitor. But the main guides are hunger and any pathological symptoms. It is essential to be well nourished and you should experience minimal hunger; hunger is a sign the body is lacking something.
Best, Paul
Hi Paul,
Your use of the phrase “pathological symptoms” reminds me of a question I’ve wanted to ask for a while. How can we tell when a symptom is indicative of a problem or just a normal part of bodily function? E.g., PMS discomforts and slight mucus for a short time after drinking milk. Is it a matter of degree?
Becoming hyper aware of everything my body feels and does has its drawbacks, as now I question everything. The two examples above don’t disrupt my life or cause great pain, so I’m inclined to ignore them. Is that unwise?
Thanks for your input! I’m looking forward to hearing your Paleo Summit presentation tonight.
Hi JW,
Well, I think those sorts of symptoms do suggest that something is imperfect. For example, the mucus might suggest a milk intolerance – an immune reaction to something in the milk.
I don’t think you should worry or be stressed about such things, but it’s good to be mindful of them, and to think over what affects them. Then you have a chance of finding a fix.
Best, Paul
Hi Paul!
About the grey hair:
I have dark brown hair but with a few red hairs interspearsed here and there (much more in beard then on head which makes me look 10 years older when unshaved) and those red hairs turned white ~40 y.o. (turning 44 this year). No change with the brown ones yet. But I think that’s perfectly normal according Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_hair_color
as red hair pigment is much more unstable then brown (and thus blond as it’s just lighter brown).
Now, given the color similarities between copper and red hair I mean, could this indeed be a sign of copper deficiency? Does copper in tissue deplete with age?
JW,
it’s possible the milk-mucus reaction indicates sensitivity to galactose, a sugar in milk. The way to test this would be to try pure lactose on a milk-free day. There seems to be considerable individual variation in galactose clearance, due to genetic enzyme variations, age, liver function, and galactose and its products are important constituents of mucus.
Milk-mucus production is also symptomatic of cold virus infection (and may possibly be an indicator of other persistent viruses?).
“[H]igh-sugar diets don’t necessarily produce body fat accumulation in humans,”
There are HG people that only eat meat and honey, and do OK on this.
My recent personal experience is that gray hair and thyroid are connected.
I’ve got Hashimoto’s and after reading Mario’s series on Iodine, Selenium and Hashimoto’s began taking 200mg of LEF Super Selenium daily. In September I started taking Iosol Iodine and doubled my dose monthly until taking 2.5mg or 2 drops per day. I thought the iodine might warm me up this winter but I was actually colder than normal, unusually sick, and felt run down. I came down with three colds and one stomach virus, including a cold that lingered for several weeks. The previous winter I was sick once. Also, my hair dresser confirmed last week that my hair became quite a bit grayer since she saw me in December.
Because I suspected something was amiss, I had my TSH checked. It went from 0.96 in late August to 6.33 in late February.
I’m apparently one of those for whom iodine supplementation is not a good idea, even in the presence of adequate selenium and ample carbs (at least 400 calories per day in potatoes, rice, and fruit). Also, graying hair came with a struggling thyroid.
Hi Peter,
Sorry to hear of your experience. I had hoped that the selenium and the slow ramp up would greatly reduce the risk of that sort of response.
Hi Peter,
Sorry for your experience. TSH, while increasing iodine, is not a good indicator of thyroid functioning.
But, your problems, to me, may indicate a bromide intoxication. Many people on Paleo/PHD do not eat enough salt, which will only aggravate bromide side effects, since sodium is crucial to bromide excretation. Do you have any of the symptoms of the link below? Have you tried the salt loading protocol?
http://breastcancerchoices.org/bromidedetoxsymptomsandstrategies.html
Best wishes to you.
Mario.
Hi Peter,
I just had another thought about your bad experience … it sounds more like selenosis (excess selenium) than excess iodine.
Try dropping the supplemental selenium and see if you get better, then try adding iodine slowly. It may be that you already get plenty of selenium from food and the supplements are too much.
Best, Paul
Regarding raw milk:
An article in the International Milk Genomics Consortium, while expressing ambivalence about raw milk, nevertheless stated that pasteurization can “destroy complex proteins and other components that could bolster human health”, and noted raw milk’s protective effects against allergies in children. This is in no way a fringe source: http://milkgenomics.org/newsletter/the-evidence-around-raw-milk
The FDA’s own source data shows that for Listeria contamination, raw, unpateurized milk had 3.1 cases, pasteurized milk had 90.8 cases, and Deli meats had 1598.7 cases, thus going against its stated claims. So the fact is that FDA data is inconsistent with its recommendations: http://www.fda.gov/Food/ScienceResearch/ResearchAreas/RiskAssessmentSafetyAssessment/ucm185291.htm – scroll down to “Summary Table 4, Per Annum Basis”
According to a recent Lancet study, driking Raw milk gave protection against Athsma and allergies: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11597666
The CDC reports 2 deaths from raw milk between 1998 and 2008 (some evidence suggests that this was actually from Queso Fresco cheese: http://thecompletepatient.com/article/2011/february/19/power-numbers-war-over-raw-dairy-how-cdc-came-admit-death-wasnt-categorized)
The fact is though that their premise that this means there is a greater danger from it than from pasteurized milk can be refuted. To refute it, I am not using the WAPF, but instead a MSNBC article noting a greater number of deaths in just one instance in one year from pasteurized milk: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22561188/ns/health-diet_and_nutrition/t/toxic-milk-blamed-deaths-miscarriage/#.UPcTP1HKM00
There are many more, but this is just one example.
Also, when considering outbreaks, it is important to note the condition the cows are in. Studies have shown that grass fed beef is virtually free of pathogenic E. coli bacteria. Factory farmed cattle are fed grains rather than grasses, and this changes the acidity of their digestive tracts. The acidity increase promotes the pathogenic strains of E. coli: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9733511
The Raw milk of organic pastures, for instance, had no traces of E. coli: http://organicpastures.com/pdfs/Recall%20Lab%20Results%20A7%20L%20Analytical%20Laboratories%2011.21.11.pdf
It is important to note that Raw milk has structures in it that actually kill some pathogens, like Listeria: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC183971/, http://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=30025&local_base=GEN01-CSU01