Category Archives: Around the Web - Page 6

Around the Web; Snowy Halloween Edition

Posted by on October 29, 2011 18 comments

A storm today is supposed to turn to snow tonight – one of the earliest snowstorms in memory. Luckily trick-or-treating weather Monday should be perfect.

A few events are coming up. First, I’ll be speaking on Saturday Nov 12 at the Wise Traditions Conference in Dallas, doing the “Wellness Track” from 9:00 am until 12:15 am. The conference will be full of great speakers, including Sally Fallon, Chris Masterjohn, Dr. Joseph Mercola, Natasha Campbell-McBride, Denise Minger, Stephanie Seneff, Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker, Harvey Ussery (Harvey’s wife Ellen is one of our most frequent commenters), and many others. Please consider attending:

Wise Traditions Conference ~ Dallas, TX ~ November 11-14 2010

The following Saturday, Nov 19, I’ll be speaking at CrossFit NYC. I’ll have details about that next week.

Finally, on Sunday, December 4 at 3 pm I’ll be giving a talk and book signing at Green Meadows Farm in Hamilton, MA.

[1] The “Safe Starch Symposium” continues:

Jimmy Moore is graciously continuing the conversation about safe starches on his blog, with the latest installment coming from Dr. Ron Rosedale. For those keeping score, here’s how the discussion has gone:

On Tuesday I’ll explain why Dr Rosedale almost persuaded me to eat a high-carb diet.

Due to personal health considerations, Jimmy won’t be trying an n=1 experiment with safe starches. However, we’ll still develop a 7-day meal plan for those who want to give our diet a try, and Jimmy will invite his readers to try it and share their experiences. That will happen in December, and Shou-Ching and I are looking forward to it.

[2] Music to read by:

[3] Interesting posts this week:

Is radioactive cobalt improving the health of the Japanese?

Stephan Guyenet discusses the brain’s ability to regulate peripheral glucose utilization and lipolysis from fat cells. It makes sense that this would be the case: Apart from the brain’s advantage as a coordinating organ due to its access to signals from nerves, it is also the highest priority destination for glucose, and so the organ best informed about when glucose utilization should be suppressed elsewhere.

Dr Oz has a “Prehistoric Diet Plan”. I think of it as Loren Cordain merged with T. Colin Campbell, and then acquired by the US Department of Agriculture.

Dr Steve Parker reports that intentional weight loss doesn’t reduce risk of death … but it does prevent progression to type 2 diabetes.

Eating a fatty meal causes pythons to grow bigger hearts. Even more interesting, giving mice a transfusion of fed-python blood causes them to grow bigger hearts. Will Tour de France riders be adopting pet pythons?

Another mummy gets diagnosed with prostate cancer. The cancer has to have metastasized to bone to be visible in skeletal evidence. I have not heard of any Paleolithic skeletons containing metastases, but a paleopathologist states that bone cancer has been found in Paleolithic skeletons.

Can going Paleo strain a marriage? It did for Peggy the Primal Parent.

Aaron Blaisdell is teaching UCLA students to eat primally. What’s that illustration on the table?

CarbSane has been chipping in to the safe starches debate (Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday).

Melissa McEwen says, “The no-starch camp is in its death throes” … I prefer to think of it as “the pro-starch camp is in its prime of life”.

Lucas Tafur gives us a reason to put vinegar in our foods: gut bacteria can convert acetate to butyrate.

Chris Kresser warns of the dangers of estrogens in plastic containers.

Emily Deans considers whether ketogenic diets may help bipolar disorder. By the way, Emily is visiting Harvard Law School on Halloween. No word yet on her costume.

Danny Roddy defends fructose against charges it is emaciating.

Do you have heightened formation of fear memories? Randall Parker says you may be hypothyroid.

Bats are being decimated by a fungal infection: millions have died, and “mortality rates are staggering.” Bat physicians, however, insist the fatalities cannot be happening, because their patients do not have compromised immune systems.

“We are Heroes, They are Villains”: a must-read tribute to his students from Seth Roberts. Also, Seth tells us that bees make more honey with kombucha. I wonder how much they would make if given other fermented beverages?

NPR invites a vegetarian to critique the Paleo diet, and Paleo dieters dominate the comment thread.

Australian researchers published an interesting study on the lasting hormonal changes that occur in obesity, even if weight is lost. Weight loss in the obese triggered an immediate 2/3 drop in leptin levels, and a full year after weight loss leptin levels were still depressed by 1/3.

Richard Nikoley … rods … cat o’ nine tails … and a temptress who should have been named “Eve.”

Paul Halliday enters the Mesolithic.

[4] Cute animal photo:

From Oak0y via Meredith Harbour Yetter.

[5] Ah, romance:

[6] The Waterfall of Gulfoss:

Alone at the Raging Waterfall of Gulfoss

[7] Is this a CrossFit exercise?:

[8] Shou-Ching’s Photo-Art:

[9] Weekly video: A new font for dyslexics:

Via Tom Smith.

Around the Web; Green Meadows Farm Edition

Posted by on October 22, 2011 19 comments

We had a delightful tour today at Green Meadows Farm in Hamilton, Massachusetts; I’ll write more about it tomorrow. Thanks to Andrew and Diana Rodgers for showing us around.

Also on Sunday October 23, Paul will be on Cary Nosler’s Wide World of Health radio show at 4 pm Eastern / 1 pm Pacific. It’s possible to listen live on the Talk 650 KSTE web site.

[1] Perfect Ego-Gratifying Book Review: Over at Health Correlator, Ned Kock has reviewed our book. Ned is one of the smartest and most interesting bloggers in the Paleosphere, so we were delighted that he liked our book. In his first paragraph, he links “Perfect Health Diet” to “Facebook”, and later he speaks of Shou-Ching and me in the same breath with well-known scientists:

Their main PhD disciplines are somewhat similar to Einstein’s and Curie’s; which is an interesting coincidence. What the Jaminets have written about nutrition is probably analogous, in broad terms, to what Einstein and Curie would have written about nutrition if they were alive today.

If they were alive today, they’d be 132 and 144 years old respectively, and everyone would be intensely interested in their nutitional tips!  So we take that as high praise indeed.

Ned’s wasn’t the only pleasing review we got this week; Dr. Srdjan Andrei Ostric wrote a generous endorsement of our book. I was also pleased that one of Dr Ostric’s readers did NOT directly compare me to her emotionally abusive ex.

[2] Interesting posts this week:

Andrew Badenoch of Evolvify downgrades potatoes and rice to “sneaky untrustworthy bastards” and bok choy to “I’m not making out with you if you eat that.” This was in response to that interesting miRNA study I mentioned in a previous Around the Web. Richard Nikoley offered his thoughts.

One of Richard’s commenters hopes we’ll critique the study. It’s not an easy study to critique because it’s the first of its kind; everything about it is interesting, but very likely not all the results will be reproducible. Also, it’s premature to draw any conclusions about how it affects diet, since all plant and animal cells contain microRNA, and there’s nothing special about the miRNAs of rice or potato. If rice miRNAs can survive cooking and digestion and cross cellular membranes and affect gene expression, so will miRNAs from every other plant and animal food. That would imply that we evolved with a background level of dietary miRNAs in our cells. The implications for diet are hard to fathom, except that it probably strengthens the case for eating in an ancestral manner, since an ancestral diet would deliver a mix of miRNAs we evolved to handle.

Emily Deans summarized yesterday’s talks at TEDx Cambridge. A line that caught my eye:

Lustig seems to feel that fructose, MCTs, and BCAAs are damaging to the mitochondria and lead to insulin resistance (thus he is anti-corn fed beef, as corn-fed beef is higher in BCAAs than grassfed, apparently.)

I’m pro BCAAs. Is that a reason to favor corn-fed beef?

Two PaleoHackers, Kamal and Aravind, tried to reduce food reward and lost weight. Stephan Guyenet recounts their story.

J Stanton has another blockbuster exposition on food reward, which contains a challenge to Stephan’s recommendations for weight loss: eating food you like decreases quantity of food consumed more than eating bland food.

Lucas Tafur reports that some mouth bacteria can digest gluten, making wheat safer for their hosts.

Mike Gruber’s triglycerides went down after he added starches and supplements in line with Perfect Health Diet recommendations. Was it the starch, or the micronutrients?

Melissa McEwen compares overeating to porn addiction and discusses Paleomedicine.

Oetzi the Iceman had Lyme disease. Folks with Lyme infections are more likely to be diagnosed with psychiatric disease. Oetzi was discovered in a reclining posture. Coincidence?

Dr Steve Parker links to Vitruvius at The Sagacious Iconoclast, who explains how Paleolithic man might have made cheese: “transport milk in mammal stomach vessels containing natural rennet, in the heat, thousands of years ago, and voila: curds and whey.”

In the New York Times, a woman has survived a dangerous cancer by retreating to national parks. She’s not the only one; the combination of sunshine, exercise, and nature seems to have a strong anti-cancer effect.

Darrin Carlson wrote on The Five Failings of Paleo. You might have seen the piece reprinted at Free the Animal.

John Durant is manly, in a Jack Sparrow Dances with Wolves kind of way.

Jamie Scott says: Make your own antioxidants.

Mark Sisson says: For healthy mitochondria, eat fat.

Dr BG fostered a kitty, and reflects on human evolution.

Nourished Kitchen has tips for a healthier Halloween.

Let’s see, there was the Permian-Triassic Extinction, the Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction – the 1883 Extinction?

[3] Cute animal photo:

Via Yves Smith.

[4] A mini-debate on protein and longevity:  In the comment thread to Ned Kock’s review of our book, Ned has an excellent counterargument about protein and longevity:

Here is another counterpoint to the notion that increased protein intake leads to decreased longevity. A BMI of 25 is generally associated with the lowest mortality: http://bit.ly/fWdsPC

Now, we know that as people age they generally tend to lose body mass (contrary to popular opinion), primarily due to loss of lean body mass, which seems to outpace body fat gain.

Increased protein consumption seems to counter that, and this appears to be related to both bone and muscle retention, contributing to a higher BMI.

So it is not unreasonable to conclude that the relatively high BMI of 25 is associated with retention of lean body mass with age, even as body fat gradually increases as well, leading to the perception that the fat are the ones living the longest.

Of course I am not talking about 600 g/d of protein. These seniors seem to have done quite well in terms of bone retention at around 85-90 g/d: http://bit.ly/f1Pi3T

In another comment Ned mentions receiving from O Primitivo a link to a paper that looks fascinating.

[5] The End of Human Progress: Via Joshua Newman, an aphorism from Ben Franklin:

I have always thought that one man of tolerable abilities may work great changes, and accomplish great affairs among mankind, if he first forms a good plan, and, cutting off all amusements or other employments that would divert his attention, make the execution of that same plan his sole study and business.

A corollary from Paul Jaminet:

Humanity will stagnate until the Internet becomes boring.

[6] Autism Updates:

Weston A Price might have something to say about possible nutritional factors behind this finding: Autistic children have an altered facial structure, characterized by wider eyes, a broader upper face, wider mouth and philtrum, but shorter middle region of the face including cheeks and nose.

There seems to be a connection between maternal gestational diabetes and autism. A Rice University professor discusses the link:

[7] Not the Weekly Video: Why Paleolithic man didn’t bicycle:

[8] Shou-Ching’s Photo Art:

[9] Weekly video: Never trust an animal that wears a tuxedo!

Via Bix.

Around the Web; The Case of the Killer Vitamins

Posted by on October 15, 2011 56 comments

I’d like to thank Patrick Timpone for a very enjoyable interview on The Morning Show at One Radio Network. Here is the MP3; I’m on for the second half of the show. You can find a zip file at the archive for October 13. Patrick’s producer Sharon tells me that she’s already benefited from our book:

I was following The Primal Diet and since I read the book, I’ve been allowing myself potatoes and rice and doing very very well on them among doing some other things you recommend.

Also, I’d like to thank Jimmy Moore once more for hosting his highly entertaining “safe starch” symposium (Jimmy’s original post; my response, here and at Jimmy’s). It was great to get the opportunity to explain ourselves to so many people in the low-carb and Paleo movements.

Jimmy is planning to try our diet for a week in November, which will be a good occasion for us to publish a 7-day meal plan. We’ll invite anyone who’s curious to try the diet along with Jimmy, and compare notes.

[1] Interesting posts this week:

Angelo Coppola on Latest in Paleo wonders if Denmark’s saturated fat tax will apply to mother’s milk. If so, it’s bad news for unemployed infants! (He also discusses the “safe starch” debate.)

I once knew a French astronomer who died from snorting cocaine while observing at 14,500 feet. Emily Deans makes me wonder:  Did he have Crisco for dinner?

Stan the Heretic offers his mitochondrial dysfunction theory of diabetes. Peter Dobromylskyj and JS Stanton are also developing ideas along this line. Speaking of JS, his post this week has some great photos of Sierra wildflowers and reflections on the state of the Paleo community.

CarbSane partially confirms Dr. Ron Rosedale: eating carbs does raise leptin levels compared to eating fat, but it is a mild rise over an extended period of time, not a “spike.”

Beth Mazur explains why her bathroom door is always closed.

Chris Kresser discusses why chronic illness often generates a form of hypothyroidism, low T3 syndrome.

Joshua Newman knows how to flatter.

How solid is the case against Andrew Wakefield? Autism is certainly characterized by intestinal dysfunction, and Age of Autism notes that distinguished scientists are citing Wakefield’s work.

Richard Nikoley claims he doesn’t know the words to “Kumbayah.”

Seth Roberts points out that the Specific Carbohydrate Diet has been curing Crohn’s for 80 years, but still no clinical trial.

Jamie Scott, That Paleo Horse Doctor, asks: Why do horses get laminitis?

We’ve quoted vegetarian Dr. Michael Greger’s concerns about arsenic in eggs. I’m more concerned about soy protein in eggs.

Following Steve Jobs’s death, Tim asked for an opinion about the unconventional cancer therapies of Dr Mercola’s friend Nicholas Gonzalez. David Gorski, toward the end of a detailed examination of Jobs’s medical condition and treatment, links to his own claim that the Gonzalez protocol is “worse than useless.”

[2] Music to read by:

[3] Cute animal photo:

[4] Notable comments this week:

PeterC’s dad, who has diabetes, is doing well on our diet. Daniel’s stepdad had a similar experience.

Helen informs us that sweet potato intolerance may be due to raffinose.

Mario Iwakura gives us his infectious theory of diabetes. I think a lot of the cases of disrupted glucose regulation, where people get frequent hyperglycemic and hypoglycemic episodes, may be due to occult infections.

Dr Jacquie Kidd (who blogs at drjacs.com) has gotten some great advice from Jamie Scott.

Ellen tells us of cases of iodine supplementation controlling diabetes.

Ned is looking for grass-fed cowbells.

[5] Do Vitamins Kill?: An analysis of the Iowa Women’s Health Study came out this week, and it purported to show that nearly all supplements except calcium and vitamin D increased mortality, with iron being the worst. Oskar asked us to look into it, so we did.

The study followed a large number of women in Iowa, and queried them several times about supplement use. In 1986, the baseline, the women had an average age of 62 (range of 55 to 69) and 66% were taking supplements. By 2004, the surviving women had an average age of 82 and 85% were taking supplements.

Here is the data on overall mortality vs supplement use:

“Cases” are instances of someone dying. “HR” or hazard ratio is the likelihood of dying if you supplement divided by the likelihood of dying if you don’t. Note that all the hazard ratio estimates are “adjusted.”

Unadjusted Hazard Ratios

The left columns of the table give us death statistics and allow us to calculate raw hazard ratios, with no adjustment whatsoever. Seven of the supplements have unadjusted HRs below 1.00, eight have unadjusted HRs above 1.00. The 15 HRs average to 1.01. Without copper, which has an unadjusted HR of 1.17, they average to 0.998. In short, death rates among supplementers were almost identical to death rates among non-supplementers.

This is interesting because supplement usage rose rapidly with age. It was 66% at age 62 and 85% at age 82. Supplement users were, on average, older than non-supplement users. But mortality rises rapidly with age. So there should have been a lot more deaths among the supplement users, just because of their more advanced age.

The paper should have, but didn’t, report age-adjusted hazard ratios. Adjusting for age is very important, since mortality depends strongly on age, and so does supplement use. However, it’s obvious what the result of age-only adjustment would have been. Supplement usage would have shown a substantial reduction in the risk of dying.

Hazard Ratios Adjusted for Age and Energy Intake

The least-adjusted hazard ratios reported in the paper are adjusted for age and energy intake.

The energy intake adjustment is disappointing, because energy intake is affected by health: healthier people are more active and eat more, and obese people also eat more. Including indices of health as independent variables in a regression analysis will tend to mask the impact of the supplements on health, creating misleading results.

However, let’s go with what we have. Based on “Age and Energy Adjusted” hazard ratios, supplements generally decrease mortality. Nine of the fifteen supplements decreased mortality, five increased mortality. At the 95% confidence interval, five supplements decreased mortality, only one increased mortality.

Looking at the specific supplements, results are mostly consistent with our book analysis. Let’s start with the five that showed harm:

  • Folic acid and iron – two nutrients we regard as dangerous and recommend not supplementing – both elevate mortality, as we would expect. Iron is particularly harmful, and should generally be avoided by women once they have stopped menstruating.
  • Multivitamins slightly increase mortality, a result that has been found before and that we acknowledge in the book. This is probably due to (a) an excess of folic acid, (b) an excess of iron (if the women are taking iron-containing multis after menopause), (c) an excess of vitamin A (this is no longer the case – multi manufacturers have reduced the A content of vitamins in response to data – but in 1986-2004 most multis contained substantial amounts of A) which is harmful in women with vitamin D and/or K2 deficiencies (both extremely common, and D deficiency in this cohort is supported by the benefits of D and calcium in the study and the northerly latitude of Iowa) or (d) imbalances in other nutrients; for reasons of bulk multis tend to lack certain minerals, notably magnesium and calcium.
  • Vitamin B6 is an anomaly, as we wouldn’t expect B6 to be harmful in moderation. I’m guessing B6 would have been taken to reduce high homocysteine and for this purpose would often have been taken along with folic acid, a harmful supplement. Also, B6 should be balanced by vitamin B12 and biotin, and may not have been. Perhaps people with cancer were unaware that B6 promotes tumor growth; (UPDATE: See comments; I was misremembering studies, B12 and folic acid can promote tumor growth, but in other studies B6 looks protective against cancer) indeed, in the breakdown by cause of death in Table 3, B6 increases cancer mortality by 6%, but CVD mortality by only 1%. (Folic acid and vitamin A were other cancer-promoting supplements.) The harm from B6 was not statistically significant and I wouldn’t read much into it.
  • Copper is another anomalous result, but this was the least popular supplement, taken by only 229 women or 0.59%. Copper’s hazard ratios were dramatically affected by adjustment: in the raw data, mortality is only 17% higher among copper supplementers, but after age and energy adjustment it is 31% higher, and multivariable adjustment increases it substantially again. Clearly the effect of copper is highly sensitive to adjustment factors, indicating that copper was being taken by an unusual population. I think the hazard ratio for copper is impossible to interpret without knowing why these women were supplementing copper. If we knew their situation, there would probably be an appropriate adjustment that would make a huge difference in mortality. I would say the numbers are too small, the population too skewed, and the information too limited to draw any conclusion here.

Overall, I would interpret the nine that showed benefits as being highly supportive of micronutrient supplementation. The fact that vitamin A, vitamin B complex, vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin E, calcium, magnesium, selenium, and zinc all reduced mortality suggests that a well-formulated multivitamin would likely have reduced mortality.

Hazard Ratios After Multivariable Adjustment

Now, what about the “Multivariable Adjusted” results, which were responsible for the headlines?

We have to keep in mind a famous aphorism from the mathematician John von Neumann:

With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.

The multivariable adjustments use 11 parameters and 16 parameters respectively. Using so many parameters lets the investigators generate whatever results they want.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that both multivariable adjustments substantially increased the hazard ratio of every single one of the 15 supplements. The 11-variable adjustment increased hazard ratios by an average of 7%, the 16-variable adjustment by an average of 8.2%.

Rest assured, it would have been easy enough to find multivariable adjustments that would have decreased hazard ratios for every single one of the 15 supplements.

I believe it verges on the unethical that the variables chosen include dangerous health conditions: diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity. These three health conditions just happen to be conditions that are often improved by supplementation.

Anyone familiar with how regression analyses work will immediately recognize the problem. The adjustment variables serve as competing explanations for changes in mortality. If supplementation decreases diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity, and through these changes decreases mortality, the supplements will not get credit for the mortality reduction; rather the decreased diabetes, blood pressure, and obesity will get the credit.

Imagine we had a magic pill that completely eliminated diabetes, obesity, and high blood pressure, and reduced mortality by 20%, with no negative health effects under any circumstances. But if regression analysis showed that non-diabetic, non-obese, and non-hypertensive people had 25% less mortality, then a multivariable adjusted analysis would show that the magic pill increased mortality. Why? Because the elimination of diabetes, obesity, and hypertension should have decreased mortality by 25% (the regression analysis predicts), but mortality was only decreased 20%, so adjusted for diabetes, obesity, and hypertension the magic pill must be credited with the additional 5% dead. The multivariable adjusted HR for the magic pill becomes 0.8/0.75 = 1.067.

Of course, what ordinary people want to know is: Will this magic pill improve my health? The answer to that would be yes.

What (too many) scientists want to know is: Which methodology for analyzing this magic pill data will get me grant money? That depends on whether the funding authorities are positively or negatively disposed toward the magic pill industry. Once you know that, you search for the 16-variable multivariable regression that generates the hazard ratios the authorities would like to see.

My take? Judging by the data in Table 2 plus corroborating evidence from clinical trials reviewed in our book, I would say that a well-formulated supplement program, begun at age 62, may increase the odds of survival to age 82 by something on the order of 5% to 10%. Perhaps not a magic pill; but worthwhile.

[6] Not the weekly video: An exceptional magic show:

[7] Shou-Ching’s Photo Art:

[8] Weekly video: A new tool for stroke recovery:

Around the Web; Steve Jobs Memorial Edition

Posted by on October 8, 2011 38 comments

Note: I’ve been overwhelmed with work lately and have fallen behind on the comment threads. I will get to comments on the Anti-Cancer and Q&A threads as soon as I can.

Appeal for Help: One of our readers is a dear lady in Queensland, Australia, near Brisbane. She is a chronic disease patient and housebound. She would like to have an assistance dog for emotional support, and would like to have a puppy that she can train. Australian law requires housing units to permit certified support dogs, but her housing complex is denying permission for a puppy that is not yet certified. If any Australian lawyer would be willing to provide her with advice on her legal rights pro bono, please send an email to pauljaminet@perfecthealthdiet.com and I will put you in touch.

[1] Jimmy Moore’s symposium: I’d like to thank Jimmy Moore for organizing his symposium on “safe starches.” It’s a great topic and only Jimmy could have brought together so many interesting people to discuss it.

It might have worked better if I had been able to provide some background to the panel. As it was, too many of the responders were unfamiliar with what we mean by “safe starches” and many may have supposed that our diet was designed for diabetics.

Kurt Harris did yeoman’s work this week, commenting on my post, Jimmy’s, and threads on PaleoHacks. It was great to have someone of like mind taking the time to comment. Thank you, Kurt, Melissa Hartwig, Emily Deans, Praguestepchild, and everyone who wrote supportive comments.

Some humor did come out of the discussions. My favorite was a PaleoHacker consoling Jack Kruse: “It’s just pillar envy, Quilt.”

I expect to post my reply on Tuesday.

[2] Music to read by: Brook Benton and Dinah Washington have what it takes:

[3] Interesting posts this week:  Michael A Smith of Critical MAS tests our ideas about ketogenic fasting and finds that he can eliminate hunger while fasting by eating coconut oil and fermented vegetables.

Sean at PragueStepChild reminds us of some great posts by an outstanding blogger who has gone silent, Robert McLeod, on the subject of macrophages and the role of chronic infections in disease. Start with Sean, but be sure to finish at Robert’s blog.

Chris Masterjohn reports that AGEs come from … ketones!

We know God is jealous, but is He also female? Sex outside of marriage may raise the risk of penile fractures. Via Tom Smith.

Stephan Guyenet continues his series defending the food reward hypothesis of obesity. JS Stanton of Gnolls.org has been doing a closely related series, here’s his Part VI which explains key concepts relating to food reward, and has links to Parts I through V. Part IV was my favorite.

Two economists took their hand at finding the cause of the obesity epidemic. The biggest cause they found? Declines in smoking rates, which explained about 2% of the weight gain since 1979.

Peggy the Primal Parent has had a fascinating experience with gut dysbiosis. Fiber and fructose give her hypoglycemic episodes, but pure glucose doesn’t.

Bruce Charlton notes that scientists tend to develop theories into taboos, so that “using the taboo concept in reasoning triggers nerves and hormones and alters the body state to feel bad.” This may explain the reaction of some low-carb gurus to the word “starch.”

Emily Deans and Melissa McEwen both reviewed Wheat Belly; Melissa emphasizes what’s not in the book.

Don Matesz proposes the unconventional idea that strength training reduces protein requirements.

Jamie Scott, That Paleo Guy, produced the ultimate primer on phytic acid. Chris Kresser recently advised not going nuts on nuts, because of their phytic acid.

Chris Highcock reports that Shift Work at Young Age Is Associated with Elevated Long-Term Cortisol Levels and Body Mass Index. This fits with our theme that proper circadian rhythms are important for many aspects of health including weight regulation.

Frank Hagan of Low Carb Age dissects a study we mentioned last week, that recommended a diet of 1/3 carb 1/3 protein 1/3 fat. Turns out they found that 1/3 carbs is better than high carb, but didn’t have any data to show that lower carb was worse.

Michael Greger, the vegetarian doctor, asks if animal food lovers are missing “vitamin S” – salicylic acid.

Mark Sisson at Mark’s Daily Apple has been holding reader video contests and has a ton – metric ton even – of reader workout and food videos. “Tuna Tataki with Gazpacho” won the prize for best recipe video.

Peter of Hyperlipid blames the Denmark saturated fat tax on Unilever. This story he linked says that Denmark has a low obesity rate – below 10%. Look for that to change now that saturated fats are more expensive.

Via John J. Ray, the sad story of a 25-year-old woman who killed herself with cough medicine. The acetaminophen was destroying her liver, but she thought she had a cold and kept taking more.

At PaleoHacks, a healthy 34 year old had a heart attack. Did his doctors misdiagnose a protozoal infection?

[4] Cute animal photo:

[5] Remembering Steve Jobs:

Steve Jobs passed away Wednesday night. When we got the news, we had just finished a dinner with the Living Paleo in Boston group and Julie Mayfield, author of Paleo Comfort Foods. We stopped at Shou-Ching’s office so that, coincidentally enough, she could finish submitting a pancreatic cancer grant application before a midnight deadline.

A commenter asked if I had anything to say about his health history. No; we don’t know the causes of Jobs’s cancer, and have no reason to assume he wasn’t following the best available health advice. Indeed, he survived pancreatic cancer longer than most.

It is true that Jobs was a close friend of Dean Ornish – one of his last meals was with Dr. Ornish at a Palo Alto sushi restaurant, Jin Sho. After his diagnosis with pancreatic cancer in 2003, he apparently tried to treat his cancer with a vegetarian diet under Dr. Ornish’s direction, but it didn’t go well. He finished his life eating a pescetarian diet.

Jobs leaves a wife and four children. I like this photo of Jobs leaning on his wife Laurene after an exhausting talk:

Jobs was always a bit of a rebel; in the third grade he released snakes into the classroom and exploded bombs. At Apple the early ads celebrated rebelliousness in pursuit of progress:

We’ll remember Jobs as the greatest entrepreneur of his time, a man who did exactly what Apple’s ads said: “push the human race forward.” If you doubt how far the human race has come, watch the 28-year-old Steve Jobs introducing the “insanely great” Macintosh computer:

UPDATE: A modification of the Apple logo, by a student from Hong Kong:

[6] Let’s buy a lemon tree honey: It’s time for civil disobedience:

Several years ago, Bridget Donovan, who has now been dubbed “The Lemon Tree Lady,” purchased a Meyer lemon tree from meyerlemontree.com. A resident of Wisconsin, Donovan purchased the tree legally and in full accordance with all federal and state laws regulating citrus transport, and had lovingly cultivated and cared for her indoor citrus plant for nearly three years.

Then, out of nowhere, Donovan received an unexpected letter from the USDA informing her that government officials were going to come and seize her tree and destroy it — and that she was not going to be compensated for her loss. The letter also threatened that if Donovan was found to be in possession of “regulated citrus” again, she could be fined up to $60,000.

Donovan was shocked, to say the least, as her tree was not a “regulated citrus.” The store from which she purchased it is fully legitimate, and she had done absolutely nothing wrong. But it turns out Donovan and many others who had also purchased similar citrus plants had faced, or were currently facing, the very same threats made against them by the USDA.

Most of those targeted simply surrendered their trees without trying to fight back, Donovan discovered. And while she, herself put up a hefty fight in trying to get honest answers in order to keep her tree, Donovan was eventually forced to surrender it as well. And worst of all, many of those who were told that a replacement tree would be in “compliance” later had those trees confiscated, too.

Why has the USDA been targeting lemon tree owners? The answer is unclear, other than that they are a supposed threat to the citrus industry. And a USDA official admitted to Donovan that the agency has been spying on those suspected of owning lemon trees, and targeting all found to be in possession with threats of fines and raids if they failed to give them up — and the agency has been doing this without a valid warrant.

UPDATE: Apparently the threat is “citrus greening disease.” Hat tip James.

One of the comments: “First they came for the raw cow’s milk and I didn’t speak out, as I prefer raw goat’s milk. Then they came for the vegetable gardens in the front yards and I didn’t speak out, as I have my vegetable garden elsewhere. Then they came for the citrus trees and I didn’t speak out, as I prefer someone else to squeeze them …”

[7] Best comments this week:

Vincent explains the tuber fermentation strategy that helped cure his gut dysbiosis. He followed instructions at wildfermentation.com. Bella, like Vincent, cured her constipation with anti-fungal strategies.

We had great comments on both sides of the food reward issue. The general consensus: Perfect Health Dieters have substantially reduced food cravings and appetite, and can easily ignore most junk food, but there are still some combinations of food that create cravings or addictive eating. Here’s Stabby:

I have been eating the PHD for a while, and it has really reduced any sort of cravings and tendency to mow down, even if the food is really yummy. But indeed, I will down a bag of potato chips in an instant, because it is just that cracktastic, pretty much designed to stimulate me in every possible way.

Erp:

I’ve tried to lose weight by going low carb. The weight losses were successful, but I didn’t stop craving high carb/sugary stuff and would always gradually go back to the bad old ways and gain the weight back.

One year later strictly following the PHD, I lost almost 40 lbs and not only don’t I crave carbs and sugar, I am actually repelled by the smell of a bakery. Yeast and cinnamon are off putting.

Peter:

After approximately six months of PHD I have zero craving for sweets and have easily resisted entire tables groaning with plates of cakes, doughnuts, cookies and so forth. Resisted is the wrong word though – it’s as if all desire for a (formerly craved) substance has left my body. I’m not sure if it’s related, but I have no desire to drink alcohol these days.

Nancy:

I am maintaining my weight loss without cravings or white knuckling and feel great. Thank you! Thank you!

Interestingly, it seems to be the richer, more complex taste combinations that stimulate addictive eating. For Ellen, it’s a dessert made from “rice krisps, coconut flakes, macadamias, rice syrup, coconut oil, ghee, salt and cinnamon”; for Shelley, “trail mix of chopped up 85% dark chocolate, raisens, dry roasted salted macadamia nuts and unsweetened coconut flakes”; for Jaybird, wheat-based cake batter. Ellen writes:

Because I had seen some positive changes in my blood sugar from incrementally increasing my starches (and also from the PHD regimen of supplements especially high dosage of iodine) I got carried away and thought maybe I was getting closer to perfect and I could handle dessert type treats. It has only been two weeks, but I have been creating more and more of them. A bad sign.

Shelley writes:

I have made PHD ice cream, sweetened berry compotes, etc and this doesn’t happen. So far it’s just this one combination of products. strange?!

Fascinating.

[8] Not the weekly video: Cat and mouse:

Via Pål Jåbekk.

[9] Shou-Ching’s Photo-Art:

[10] Weekly video: Robb Wolf was the hero of Discovery Channel’s “I, Caveman.” They have selections from the show online. This one is about their difficulty obtaining potable water: