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A Critical Look at ‘The China Study’ and Other Food Plans
Reproduced from original article:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/07/22/the-china-study-and-other-nutrition-plans.aspx
The original Mercola article may not remain on the original site, but I will endeavor to keep it on this site as long as I deem it to be appropriate.
Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola Fact Checked July 22, 2023
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- Although veganism has some health benefits, it is also loaded with many disadvantages and is unsuitable for many, especially if you have certain genetic polymorphisms predisposing you to poor beta-carotene conversion
- People with polymorphisms causing poor conversion of beta-carotene are at high risk for reproductive problems, skin and eye problems and poor dental health
- The blood type diet, detailed in “Eat Right 4 Your Type,” often works well for those with blood type O, as those recommendations are consistent with a healthy diet. It typically does not work well for the other blood types
- Nutrient cycling (cycling between higher and lower amounts of fat, net carbs and protein) and cycling between high and low calorie intakes (fasting and feasting) appear to be foundational criteria for optimal biological functioning
- If you’re on a ketogenic diet, it’s important to cycle high and low amounts of net carbs once your body is able to efficiently burn fat for fuel in order to optimize your metabolism. Cyclical fasting is also recommended
Editor’s Note: This article is a reprint. It was originally published July 8, 2018.
Denise Minger is perhaps most noted for her comprehensive rebuttal of “The China Study” some eight years ago. She’s heavily vested in the vegan versus omnivore battle, having cycled through vegetarianism and raw veganism, finally coming full circle to being an omnivore.
Minger took to vegetarianism when she was just 7 years old. “I was eating steak one night at dinner and almost choked on it. I developed some kind of phobia surrounding things with meat textures and went vegetarian overnight,” she explains.
Raw Veganism Took a Toll on Health
However, during the 10 years she remained a vegetarian, she began developing food allergies, including wheat and dairy allergies. “By the time I was a teenager, I was really health-conscious,” she says. “I had to get into that whole scene just to stay healthy.”
At age 15, she discovered the raw vegan movement and got on the 80/10/10 diet, promoted by Dr. Douglas Graham. The diet is based on the hypothesis that we should eat what other primates eat, particularly frugivorous chimpanzees and bonobos.
“I was reading about it online at the age of 15 without having any background in human biology, physiology or anthropology … I fell into this trap of logic, that humans are the only animals that cook our food. We’re the only animals that eat this species-inappropriate diet, [so] I went raw vegan overnight,” she says. “For one year straight, [I ate] nothing but fruits, vegetables and some nuts — all uncooked.
I did great for the first month, as most people do when they stop eating crappy foods. After that, I started losing weight and muscle. My hair was falling out. My energy levels were fluctuating like crazy.
I was in high school at the time, taking the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT). My brain fog got so bad at one point that when I was taking the SAT, I would read the question and by the time I got to the end I couldn’t remember what the first part said …
The kicker for me, because I’ve always taken great care of my teeth, was at the end of this period of raw veganism I had 16 cavities in my mouth, after a lifetime of what had previously been perfect dental health … It was actually the dental health issue that really turned my mind around … At that point, I had to let go of the vegan philosophy. I had to start questioning things …
That’s when I came across things like the Weston A. Price Foundation, which [details] what humans have been eating that has supported health in the past. I learned about the paleo movement — different forms of health-conscious omnivory. That’s where I ended up. It was a process.”
Debunking ‘The China Study’
As mentioned, Minger produced a very comprehensive critique of “The China Study” which is the scientific justification for many vegan positions. Her analysis — which some suspected to be funded by the meat industry — was actually undertaken while recovering from an accident. At the age of 22, she was hit by a car while riding her bicycle and shattered her elbow. Her convalescence afforded her the time to work on this project.
“I got a huge book of the raw ‘China Study’ data. I love numbers. I have fun with correlations. I have fun looking at patterns. My brain gets happy. I spent about two or three months poring over the data. I needed a project, because I had nothing else to do.
I was poring over the data and that’s when I realized I needed to write a critique of the book. So much of what [author T. Colin] Campbell said was not supported by his own data. I just felt like if there’s anything I needed to do in life, it was going to be this.
I didn’t expect anyone to read it. I had a little blog. I like to say I had six readers, five of which were my mother on different computers. I didn’t realize at the time how much interest the critique would gather; how much interest there was in that book itself. I hadn’t really seen the rivalry upfront between the vegan and the paleo worlds. When I released this critique, I didn’t know it was going to be that influential,” she says.
Minger developed quite a bit of notoriety as a result of that critique, especially in the vegan community. She’s been vilified by many, including Campbell, who wrote personal rebuttals to her commentary on his work. Some have gone so far as to characterize her as someone who’s promoting processed food.
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The Case for Lowering Protein Intake
For all its drawbacks, there are benefits to veganism. The biggest one, from my perspective, is that vegans have — compared to those who eat the standard American diet — a significantly lower protein intake. I think there are valuable insights that can be drawn from that, which can be integrated into a low-carb paleo approach. Minger agrees, saying:
“For the protein issue, what I find interesting is that whenever we look at the actual China Study, for example, when you look at their food intake, it’s much different in terms of the types of animal parts they consume than what we see in America.
The protein issue is complicated, but I will say that high methionine intake — for example from muscle meat — [needs to be balanced with] glycine. You get that by eating the entire animal, the skin, tendons, connective tissue — all the stuff that Americans typically discard …
In the China Study, you don’t see them eating steaks and chicken breasts at every meal. Even the lower animal product-consuming societies, a lot of them eat insects. A lot of them eat the weird parts of the animal. I think that’s imperative for staying healthy on an omnivorous diet. Because the way we eat meat in America is pathogenic. It’s not healthy. But it’s not necessarily because animal products are bad for you …
What was amusing to me, because it was completely left out of ‘The China Study’ book, was that the healthiest populations were the seafood eaters … They had the best health outcomes. The only disease that they had more of was liver cancer. That was because they were living in humid areas where aflatoxin was more prevalent … But it wasn’t because of the animal protein. It wasn’t because of the fish.”
This makes sense considering the importance of long-chained omega-3 fats: eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). Those who restrict themselves to a plant-based diet are only getting alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) which, while being a precursor for EPA and DHA cannot be converted at significant, therapeutic levels.
Protein Cycling
Clearly, the composition of the animal protein is a significant issue. We don’t want processed foods. We don’t want meat from factory farms that is contaminated with glyphosate (due to contaminated grain feed). But there’s also the issue of the amount. Many are simply eating far too much protein, which (when consumed in excess) activates mTOR, a pathway involved in both aging and cancer. Pulsing higher and lower amounts of protein also seems a wise strategy.
“When we look at historical groups of humans, the animal food intake was generally on the lean side. We don’t have year-round access to these big fatty animals … It’s going to be seasonal when it occurs at all,” Minger says. “I’m reminded of a study on Australian aborigines. They put people out in the wild to try to acquire foods from their environment and survive on that …
Their fat intake ended up being something like 8% to 12%, because the animals were so lean and the lean protein intake was consequently much higher. I have trouble believing that animal protein itself is going to be a problem. I think what might be a problem is this consistency thing — the idea that eating the same foods year-round, without any fluctuation in the composition of the diet, is healthy. I don’t think that’s the case …
I think things like protein cycling might be therapeutic for humans. I think that even carb cycling and going through different periods of different macronutrient intakes instead of always being low-fat or always being low-carb [is a good idea]. That’s probably what the human body is best adapted to.”
Macronutrient Cycling — An Overlooked Component
In deconstructing and assessing the low-carb, high-fat approach, Minger concluded the lack of high and low nutrient cycling was one of the main problems, especially long-term, and particularly for women. “I do one-on-one consulting with people,” she says.
“A large group that I have come in contact with are women who’ve done low-carb. Their thyroid function is tanking. They’re gaining weight. They feel terrible. Their hair is falling out. It happens with men too sometimes, but I think women, hormonally, are more sensitive to the lack of carbohydrates.”
She’s also found evidence suggesting chronic lack of carbohydrates may be having an adverse effect on your gut microbiome. In his commentary, “Sorry Low Carbers, Your Microbiome Is Just Not That Into You,”1 Jeff Leach with the Human Food Project details the likely shifts found in the gut microbiome composition of people who consume low-carbohydrate diets. Whether or not those shifts are wholly detrimental or not is still unknown, but it’s worth keeping an eye on.
Minger is equally ambivalent about long-term, chronic high-fat consumption, as some of the evidence suggests it may increase gut permeability and the transport of endotoxin from gram-negative bacteria into the bloodstream, which increases chronic inflammation and related health problems.
“On one hand, we see people switching away from the standard American diet to low-carb. Yeah, they’re going to feel great. Yeah, they’re going to lose weight. There’s going to be this initial honeymoon period, just like I had with raw veganism. My question is what happens over the course of many years on a large scale … I’m wondering what the bulk of the evidence is going to show. I don’t know if we really know that yet.”
From my perspective, I think there are compelling reasons to suspect one might run into problems, for many of the reasons Minger cites. It appears nutrient cycling (i.e., cycling between higher and lower amounts of fat, net carbs and protein), and also cycling between high and low calorie intakes (fasting and feasting), are foundational criteria for optimal biological functioning.
The challenge is to find that happy balance. When writing “Fat for Fuel: A Revolutionary Diet to Combat Cancer, Boost Brain Power, and Increase Your Energy,” I dove deep into the scientific literature looking at this aspect of health.
Cyclical Ketogenic Diet Combined With Cyclical Fasting
First of all, the late Dr. Joseph Kraft showed that using sensitive oral glucose loading and testing insulin levels that insulin resistance is pervasive. Based on a more refined definition of insulin resistance, at least 80% of the population have diabetes in situ,2,3 which means they’re insulin resistant even though their fasting glucose is normal.
This is where low-carb can be really useful, yet it alone will still not be enough for many. A lot of people need to get even more aggressive and do fasting. Once you’ve done that for a while and resolve the insulin resistance, you need to cycle net carbs (total carbs minus fiber) back in.
“Low-carbohydrate eating … is a great tool to lose weight, and lose fat around the organs. You start improving insulin sensitivity because of that weight loss, and because of the reduction in the energy surplus that many people are constantly surrounded with. But I use the analogy of a [broken] refrigerator.
Your refrigerator breaks. You can do one of two things. You can say, ‘OK, I’m never going to buy any perishable food again. Everything I’m going to buy is going to be dry goods as long as the freezer or the refrigerator is broken.’ Or, you can fix the refrigerator.
Low-carbohydrate diets are like saying, ‘Let’s not use our refrigerator anymore.’ Let’s not use our carbohydrate metabolism pathways anymore. Let’s just avoid those. It’s not actually fixing the issue. As anyone who knows who’s been low-carb, you go low-carb for a while, and then you reintroduce carbohydrates and, whoa, it’s terrible.
Your blood sugar goes crazy. You feel awful. It’s like, ‘Wow. The carbohydrates are terrible.’ No. It’s because your body is no longer working to metabolize them efficiently.”
The converse can also occur. If you suppress insulin for too long, your blood sugar will tend to rise from hepatic gluconeogenesis. If you reintroduce carbohydrates at that point, it will raise insulin and lower your blood sugar. You can also eat too much fat; since fat is high in calories, the excess calories alone can lead to weight gain. As mentioned above, protein intake also needs to be regulated to avoid mTOR activation.
Traditional paleo is frequently high-protein, high-fat, similar to the Atkins approach. But you’re not going to get all the benefits unless you restrict protein. As a general rule, I recommend limiting protein to half a gram per pound of lean body weight, to ensure you’re getting the protein you need for muscle maintenance and repair. The answer is not to cut protein out altogether. You do need some, just not the enormous amounts most Americans are used to eating.
Focus on Nutrient Density
When asked what the best animal food composition might be, Minger stresses the importance of nutrient density over any specific dosage recommendations, as the ideal amount will depend on the type of meat you’re eating. “For my own diet, I focus on organ meats and shellfish,” she says. “Those are the primary foods I eat that are of animal origin. Oysters are my favorite. Nutritionally, if you look at liver and oysters, oysters are kind of like the liver of the ocean.”
People who shun animal foods due to ethical concerns about eating something that is highly sentient can also take heart in the fact that oysters lack the central nervous system “that would make them equivalent to a cow.” “There’s a bivalve vegan movement, where people are vegan with the inclusion of certain shellfish. I think that can go a long way for people to balance out a vegan diet,” she says.
As for cooking, Minger recommends using gentle methods to avoid the creation of carcinogens associated with high-temperature cooking. These byproducts “seem to be driving the correlation between meat consumption and different cancers that we see in observational studies,” she says.
“Whenever you look at a study that actually controls for the cooking method, typically once you take away the high-heat kind of strategies for cooking your meat, the correlations with various diseases start to diminish, if not disappear completely.” Byproducts created during grilling and frying include heterocyclic amines and polyaromatic hydrocarbons that form carcinogens. So, don’t overcook your meat, and balance muscle meat (steaks) with organ meat and other animal parts.
How Minger’s Diet Has Changed Over the Years
When asked how her diet has changed over the past seven years, and what insights changed her approach to eating the most, Minger replies:
“I started out really fruit-based from my raw vegan history. I would eat a ton of fruit in the morning; smoothies … In learning more about the gut microbiome, learning about digestive-resistant starch; different forms of fiber and their effect on the body, I’ve been incorporating more legumes, lentils and potatoes that have been heated and cooled [to increase] the resistant starch content. I think that has helped a lot.
I’ve also flipped my diet in terms of staggering macronutrients throughout the day. I used to start with a lot of carbohydrate and not much else (in the form of fruit). Now, I usually start with a lot of protein and vegetables, and have my high-carb meals at the end of the day. I find that helps with sleep, energy levels [and] focus.”
It’s worth noting that legumes may not be ideal for everyone, especially if you have autoimmune issues. Minger, who does a lot of work with autoimmunity, agrees lectins can be problematic if you are susceptible to autoimmune problems, whether caused by genetics, lifestyle, antibiotic use or gut microbiome issues. “At that point, the lectin problem can be real,” she says.
“There can be a legitimate reason to avoid foods that are high in certain lectins, especially the ones that are individually triggering autoimmune responses. But for people with a healthy gut microbiome, I don’t see that being necessarily bad, because if you look at human history … the lectin content of wild foods is generally pretty high.
There’s going to be a long adaptation period for us to learn how to coexist with those lectins in our diet. I think [the larger issue] is that the modern environment is creating a really unhealthy microbiome that’s making it so some people cannot handle what should be a natural lectin load. That’s my takeaway right now, subject to revision.”
Critiquing the Blood Type Diet
In preparing for this interview, I watched some of Minger’s latest material on YouTube. One of her more recent videos was a Weston A. Price Foundation presentation in which she critiqued Dr. Peter D’Adamo’s blood type diet, detailed in his book, “Eat Right 4 Your Type.”
I tried this diet back in the ’90s and had to quit because it made me diabetic. My personal take on it is that while his recommendations for blood type O, which is about half the population, is consistent with what I believe is a healthy diet, it doesn’t seem to work well for the other blood types. According to Minger:
“The fundamental issue with everything he’s saying is that it’s all wrong. The premise of his diet — that foods have different lectins [that] interact with what’s expressed on our blood cells to cause issues within the blood, which then causes inflammation and disease — there’s absolutely no mechanistic evidence showing that we can obtain high enough levels of lectins from certain foods, and that those foods will specifically interact with our specific blood type to create these problems.
That evidence just isn’t there … [He may have had] a lab, but there are problems with the research actually being published. It certainly hasn’t been replicated by other researchers. It’s more of a, ‘This is what I found. You have to take my word for it, because I wrote a book and I have a [medical] degree.’ There’s a certain, ‘Just trust me. I’m a scientist,’ behind that. If there’s anything I don’t like, it’s that …
What fascinated me … [was that] our ABO blood group can actually influence the composition of our gut microbiome for people who are secretors — people who secrete their blood type antigens on the surface of mucous cells throughout the body, the saliva and the gut, the gut in particular.
Let’s say you’re a blood type A and you’re secreting the A antigen on different cells within the gut. There are going to be certain bacteria that use that antigen as a food source and as an attachment site.
Those specific bacteria are going to be more attracted to your microbiome. They’re going to set up camp there, in a way that they might not be doing to somebody who’s a blood type O. You’re actually going to start shifting the proportion of different bacteria because of your blood type.
Tied into this is the idea of being a secretor versus a non-secretor. Most people are secretors. They will express their blood type antigens on the surface of different cells throughout the body. About 20% of the population are non-secretors.
For this group, regardless of what their actual blood type is, they have a much higher risk of a lot of digestive diseases, a lot of different health conditions in general, related to the fact that their microbiome is fundamentally different. It’s providing a lack of attachment sites for different bacteria. So, there is an influence of blood type on different things going on in the body. It’s just not through D’Adamo’s theory.”
Awesome Omnivore
After taking a professional hiatus, Minger is now working on a few new projects, including an e-book called “Awesome Omnivore.”
The book is a how-to guide for eating animal products in a way that minimizes potential risks and maximizes nutrition, including guidance on balancing methionine and glycine, differences in A1 versus A2 dairy, how to prepare meat to reduce carcinogen exposure, how to modify your animal food consumption based on genetics, and how to combine meat with other foods to reduce the absorption of heme iron to lower your risk of intestinal cancer and other health problems related to excessive iron.
High iron increases oxidative stress and can cause serious mitochondrial dysfunction. I have a genetic condition called thalassemia, which predisposes me to high iron levels. I have to be really vigilant about keeping my iron level low for these reasons.
As explained by Minger, because the molecular structure of heme is so similar to chlorophyll, if you eat lots of green leafy vegetables with your steak, the chlorophyll will inhibit absorption of some of the iron. “That alone is going to make that meal probably, on the whole, healthier for you,” she says.
“There’s this kind of dichotomy — you have the vegetable eaters and the meat eaters. The meat eaters are not usually eating enough vegetables to offset the heme issue. But if you look at studies that actually adjust for that one variable, the link with meat’s problems tends to disappear.
It’s, again, veggies to the rescue. But it doesn’t mean that you can’t eat meat too. Anyway, the book is going to be a collection of things people can do to ensure that the meat they’re consuming, the eggs and the dairy products (if they’re doing that), are as healthy as possible.”
Plant-Based Paleo
Minger is also working on a book about plant-based paleo, designed for people who are committed to avoiding animal products, for whatever reason. The aim of this book is to provide strategies to help you stay as healthy as possible for as long as possible within the limitations of a plant-based diet.
“There are vegans who have survived a long time on their diet. It’s not impossible. The human body is incredibly adaptable. But we need to understand what’s working for those people.
We need to understand that there are a lot of genetic components that go into being able to convert plant-based nutrients into their active forms. Take beta-carotene, for example. People who have really good conversion of beta-carotene into retinol, they’re probably not going to run into reproductive issues, teeth issues, skin issues or eye issues, like I did.
But for about 45% of the population, there are mutations with the BCMO1 gene that prevent that conversion from being efficient. If you have two very common polymorphisms, your conversion rate is going to drop by almost 70%.
Another less common mutation will tank your conversion by 90%. If you’re a vegan, you’re not eating any preformed vitamin A, and if you have some of those mutations, you’re going to have problems pretty quickly. How do we work with people’s genetics? How do we work with their dietary limitations?
Supplements would be good. I’d love for people to take cod liver oil if they can get over that one issue. But you need to be really aware of your specific conditions … I have those BCMO1 mutations. My vitamin A conversion is terrible. That’s part of the reason that eating liver was a huge boon for my diet. It’s my first concentrated source of vitamin A that I had in a decade, more than a decade.”
Lifelong Learning Is Key to Staying Ahead
As nutritional science keeps moving forward, we’re bound to learn new things about what we currently think of as factual. For example, Minger touches on evidence suggesting really low-fat intake may actually improve carbohydrate metabolism.
“We have the Randle Cycle. There’s competition between free fatty acids and glucose in the bloodstream for use as fuel. I think we have enough evidence to say pretty clearly that when you combine fat and carbohydrate within the same meal, if you’re a healthy person — you’re going to see a reduced blood-glucose response, but you’re going to see the same amount of insulin secretion.
Fat doesn’t decrease the insulin needs of your body when you’re eating carbohydrate. It kind of amplifies it. There have been studies where they’ll take a potato, feed it to a diabetic, then repeat the study with butter added … The more butter added to the potato, the more insulin the diabetic needs to use to deal with that meal. There’s an interactive effect, even within the span of one meal, between fat and carbohydrate …
I don’t believe in staying at one [end of the spectrum, i.e., high-carb or high-fat] forever. Obviously, you need fat-soluble nutrients. You’re going to need some fatty foods that are highly nutritious too. At the same time, you’re going to need to cycle in more carbohydrate to deal with the long-term consequences of ketogenic diets …
I believe there’s a way to integrate everything. What it comes back to is all the warring diet communities need to let go of the ego and communicate with each other. Stop saying, ‘We own the truth.’ Start listening to the other side and be curious about why things are working for them.
For me, that’s the way I’ve learned best — by challenging what I believe. Because if what I believe can be dismantled, then it’s not a good belief to hold. You need to constantly revise your theory about the world, about nutrition, about everything. It needs to be in a state of flux.”
How to Boost Brain Health and Reverse Neurological Disease
Reproduced from original article:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/07/15/boost-brain-health-reverse-neurological-disease.aspx
The original Mercola article may not remain on the original site, but I will endeavor to keep it on this site as long as I deem it to be appropriate.
Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola Fact Checked July 15, 2023
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- The less inflammatory your diet is, the faster you’re going to get well, because inflammation is nearly always a contributor to neurological dysfunction. Sugar, damaged omega-6 oils, trans fats and processed vegetable oils need to be avoided
- A simple stress reduction technique done before meals can improve your digestion and absorption of nutrients, boost your immune function, and relax your body
- Melatonin provides the best protection for your neurons against free radical damage, and you need a healthy release of melatonin through the night to calm and heal your brain
- As you get older, the enzymatic activity required to produce melatonin becomes impaired. To boost your body’s production, take 5-HTP before bedtime. 5-HTP is converted to serotonin, which is further converted to melatonin
- Natural alternatives to diuretics, commonly prescribed for hypertension, are discussed, as are the many health benefits of proteolytic enzymes
Editor’s Note: This article is a reprint. It was originally published June 10, 2018.
Your brain is a really important part of your body. I’m sure no one would disagree with that. In this interview, Dr. Lee Cowden, co-founder of the Academy of Comprehensive Integrative Medicine (ACIM), discusses some really simple and inexpensive strategies that boost brain health and support neuroregeneration. This is also the topic of this year’s ACIM conference, which will be held in Orlando, Florida, in November.
The Academy of Comprehensive Integrative Medicine was founded in 2008 with the vision of educating integrative practitioners around the globe, for the most part online. “Many practitioners are so busy that they can never take the time to go to all of the meetings they need to go to, to learn what they need to learn,” Cowden says, “so we decided to start putting educational courses online.”
ACIM Offers Training Programs
In 2014, ACIM began offering a 300-hour online integrative medicine fellowship training program. Workshops are held in Dallas every few months to allow practitioners to get hands-on training. In 2018, there were hands-on conferences in July and September 20. Those were all preludes to the main conference in Orlando in November.
“Everything we’re doing this year is focused on the brain [and] neuroregeneration,” Cowden says. “With integrative medicine, we look at the causation, and see if we can resolve the causation of the illness. Once the cause goes away, usually the illness goes away.”
You don’t have to be a health care professional to benefit from ACIM. Even laypeople can study with ACIM.
The academy offers a core wellness coach program that includes 70 hours of training. “I think every integrative practitioner needs to have half a dozen or more wellness coaches working with them to hold the hands of the patients until they get well,” Cowden says.
ACIM Conference 2018: Neuroregeneration
The November conference focused on strategies that can help regenerate all types of neurological conditions, including Alzheimer’s, autism, multiple sclerosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease and other less severe conditions such as the neurological effects of fibromyalgia, and less common conditions such as reflex sympathetic dystrophy and peripheral neuropathy.
“The tendency of the American public is to look for a magic bullet. But, really, for neurological diseases, I haven’t found a magic bullet. There’s a lot of very important pieces.
I call those the foundational pieces: Diet, removing electromagnetic fields (EMFs) from the patient’s surroundings, physical activity, as well as brain games. There are a lot of other emotional issues that impact chronic neurological conditions that we need to address as well.”
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Quenching Inflammation Is a Key Foundational Step
In regard to diet, the less inflammatory it is, the faster you’re going to get well, because inflammation is nearly always a contributor to neurological dysfunction. The most inflammatory of all foods is probably sugar, followed by damaged, oxidized omega-6 oils, trans fats and processed vegetable oils. These all need to be strictly avoided. In addition to an anti-inflammatory diet, nutritional and herbal supplements can offer targeted support.
“Eating a ketogenic diet with clean fats and oils, doing some [intermittent] fasting throughout the week and getting rid of the inflammation-creating things — sugars, omega-6 oils, peanut products that have high arachidonic acid and so on … can make a great start in getting a patient’s neurological condition improved,” Cowden says.
“In 1988, I had a colleague who had a father in a nursing home in Louisiana who had advanced Alzheimer’s. He was a full-care case. In the morning, the nurses would have to get him out of bed, dress him and feed him. He was always pooping and peeing in his pants. He couldn’t remember the names of the nurses, the family members or anybody. My colleague said, ‘Can you give me some ideas of things that will help my father?’
I said, the problem is that it’s going to take a lot of intervention, and getting that at a nursing home is not likely to happen. He said, ‘I’m pretty sure it will happen, because the head nurse of the nursing home has a mother, just like my dad, with severe dementia. She wants to see if what I try on my dad works, so that she can try it on her mom.’
I recommended a regimen: Dietary changes, supplemental nutrients and proteolytic enzymes 30 minutes before food, magnesium, vitamin D3, tocotrienols, tocopherols, bacopa monieri, other herbs, homeopathics and some things to get the metals out … chlorella … dimercaptosuccinic acid (DMSA) and so on.
I said, ‘You need to get your dad out of bed and walk him every day. Get the nurses to do this. Get them to play brain games with him.’
He called me back about four months later. He said, ‘I’ve got to give you an update on this … My dad now gets out of bed, dresses himself, feeds himself, does not poop or pee in his pants anymore. He walks around with the nurses and helps them take care of the other patients in the nursing home.
Then he sits down and plays cards with the nurses, and sometimes wins.’ That’s a big shift in just four months’ time, [and] we’ve had lots of other cases like that with dementia.”
Can You Reverse Autism?
Cowden has also seen near-magical improvements in children with autism. A remarkable case is that of a young man named Bryan. Cowden first met Bryan’s dad when Bryan was just 7 years old. He had neither speech nor socialization skills.
His dad was a restaurant owner who went back to school to become a naturopathic doctor in a desperate attempt to help his son after all of his allopathic doctors told him there was no hope for Bryan — he’d never graduate high school, go to college, hold a job, get married or have children of his own.
Cowden worked with Bryan’s father, and not only did Bryan start speaking within a year or two, he graduated high school at 18, played football in college on a scholarship and got B’s in school. After college, he became a massage therapist; fell in love, married and had two children.
He is now helping autistic children and adult patients with neurological disease to recover. I’ve met Bryan, and this story is all the more remarkable by the fact that he’s one of the healthiest people I have ever met.
There is a very objective heart rate variability test that measures the fitness of your autonomic nervous system and a variety of other variables called HeartQuest. Bryan scored virtually a perfect score on this test. From being an autistic child at age 7 to someone who’s one of the healthiest people around is a rather dramatic example showing that if you apply these principles, they really can work.
“After his dad helped him get to the point where he was able to do a lot of things for himself, Bryan became highly motivated to eat a clean diet, to do a physical activity, to drink enough water, to get enough sleep and so on,” Cowden notes. “He lives right.”
A Simple Stress Reduction Technique That Pays Dividends
The beauty of integrative medicine is that there are literally hundreds if not thousands of tools available, and sometimes the simplest, least expensive ones are among the most effective. One foundational aspect of good health is stress reduction. A stress reduction technique I learned from Cowden that has helped me decrease my sleep latency, allowing me to fall asleep really quickly when done before bed, is performed as follows:
- Place your left index finger and thumb together, then grasp a hold of these two fingers with your right hand (see video demonstration starting around 29:55). It’s important to use your left fingers, as the left side of your body entrains the right side of your body rather quickly, whereas the right side entrains the left very slowly.
- Place your hands on your lap and breathe deeply in through your nose. Hold your breath for one second before breathing out through your mouth. Keep breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth while visualizing yourself in the most relaxing place you have ever been. Be sure to include sound, taste, touch and smell in your visualization and not just the visual component. Really remember that place with all of your senses.
Doing this for four to five minutes before each meal will help improve your digestion and absorption of nutrients, boost your immune function, and relax your body. Done before bedtime, it’ll improve how fast you fall asleep, how deeply you fall asleep and the amount of healing your body can get while asleep as it boosts your immune function. For very little time, energy and effort, at no cost, you can get a lot of improvement. Cowden explains the rationale for these specific finger holds:
“On the index finger, on the middle-finger finger side, the dorsal surface, is the energy pathway for your nervous system. On the palm-side surface of the index finger is the energy pathway for your neurotransmitter system. On the thumb, on the outer aspect, is the pathway for your lymphatic system. Everybody who is chronically stressed has a stressed-out nervous system, stressed-out neurotransmitters and a clogged lymphatic system.
When you hold [your left index finger and thumb] with your right hand, you’re taking the excess energy that’s usually in these other pathways and dissipating that into the pathways that run on the palm surface of your right hand. If there are areas or pathways that are deficient in energy, then energy comes out of the pathways in your right hand and goes into the pathways in your left hand.
The principle is balancing the energy pathways. The Chinese have said for 3,000 years that disease develops whenever energy stagnates. If you stagnate energy, then you’re going to have all kinds of problems, including maldigestion and insomnia … This helps, probably more than anything I’ve found, to balance the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system.
The sympathetic is what causes the fight-or-flight. The parasympathetic, which is to balance out the sympathetic, is responsible for digestion, relaxation, sleep and the calming parts of our nervous system. So many people have almost exclusively, sympathetic and almost no parasympathetic function.”
5-HTP Boosts Melatonin and Helps Optimize Sleep
Another gem I learned from Cowden during a visit to my home was the use of 5-hydroxytryptophan (5-HTP). My deep sleep measured at zero minutes, despite spending time at the beach daily to expose myself to bright sunshine and using blackout drapes to sleep in the dark. I also turned off the electricity to my bedroom. I thought that’s all you needed to optimize melatonin. It turns out that’s not the case when you get older. Cowden explains:
“Tryptophan, which you find in turkey and pumpkin seeds, gets converted to 5-HTP. 5-HTP is converted to 5-hydroxytryptamine, also called serotonin. 5-hydroxytryptamine finally gets converted into melatonin. However, as we age, toxins pile up in the enzymes [responsible for these conversions] and prevent those enzymes from performing the work they need to do.
You have, over time, lower and lower levels of 5-HTP, serotonin and melatonin, even though you’re doing everything else right. So, yes, we have to continually detoxify, and also, sometimes, support those enzyme systems by what we call excessive precursor supply. You boost the building blocks to make the final product.
Melatonin is not very well absorbed out the gut. Some people take melatonin, but some people have kind of a paradoxical response from that. But if they take 5-HTP, they can actually make as much 5-hydroxytryptamine as they need to fairly easily, and then they have the serotonin and melatonin.”
Low Serotonin Will Impede Melatonin Production
Once I began taking 100 milligrams of 5-HTP about 20 minutes before bed, my deep sleep rapidly increased to about 30 minutes a night. Since then I’ve also painted my bedroom with grounded shielding paint that provides an ultra-low EMF environment. Turning off the electricity wasn’t enough, as assessed by measuring the electric field’s influence on my body voltage. Hopefully that’ll improve my deep sleep further.
Many are aware that serotonin is important for mood, but if you don’t have enough of it, you can’t make melatonin either, and melatonin is the most important antioxidant nutrient in the brain. As noted by Cowden, melatonin is far more important than the oral antioxidants you may take. It’s even more important than glutathione and superoxide dismutase, because it’s fat-soluble.
Melatonin provides the best protection for your neurons against free radical damage, and you need a healthy release of melatonin through the night to calm and heal your brain.
The enzyme that converts 5-HTP to serotonin requires vitamin B6 as a cofactor, so if you’re taking 5-HTP and not seeing results, that means you probably need to take some coenzymated B6 (pyridoxal 5′-phosphate) sublingually to get enough of the active form of B6 to enable the conversion of 5-HTP to serotonin.
The Many Benefits of Magnesium
Another supplement that is helpful for sleep is magnesium. Cowden prefers magnesium malate, but you can also use magnesium threonate. There are literally dozens of different types of magnesium supplements.
Magnesium threonate has the added benefit of providing some antiretroviral activity, and retroviruses tend to be a challenge inherent with many neurodegenerative diseases. Threonate is also a neurotransmitter, in addition to being an amino acid.
To avoid creating an imbalance, it’s wise to alternate between different forms of magnesium. Cowden prefers magnesium malate because malic acid is a Krebs citric acid cycle intermediate and actually helps generate more ATP energy. If you’re deficient in malic acid inside the cell and you take a magnesium malate, the malic acid is drawn into the interior of the mitochondria and will drag the magnesium in with it.
Without a doubt, magnesium is essential for mitochondrial ATP production. About 50% of the metabolic enzymes in your body require magnesium as a cofactor, so it’s a really important nutrient. It’s also required for conduction of nerve impulses and the contraction-relaxation cycle of muscles, including your heart muscle.
There’s also compelling evidence suggesting magnesium may reduce the impacts and side effects of EMF exposure. Importantly, if you don’t have enough magnesium, your body also cannot absorb potassium. Cowden explains:
“If a person is deficient in magnesium and potassium both, you can give them potassium in large amounts on an ongoing basis, and their potassium levels never come up. But if you give them magnesium and get it repleted, and then give them potassium, then their potassium levels come up.
That’s because the kidney tubules selectively hold on to magnesium and waste potassium into the toilet in order to retain the magnesium. Because, apparently, the body sees the magnesium as being a more vital nutrient than potassium.
One more thing. A lot of people in the United States are on some form of diuretic medication, either for blood pressure, swelling of their legs or for some other reason. When you take a diuretic, it has a magnesium- and potassium-wasting effect on the kidneys. They’re wasting both magnesium and potassium into the toilet. But most doctors only give potassium. They don’t give the magnesium.”
Alternatives to Diuretics
Diuretics are frequently prescribed for high blood pressure and/or swelling in the extremities. As in most cases, drugs are not necessary for treating these conditions. Swelling of the legs is often due to congestion in your lymphatic system, or kidney toxicity preventing your kidneys from properly processing water. Hence the water is retained in your tissues. Sometimes, it’s just severe toxicity in the tissues.
“One of the ways the body protects itself from toxic overload is to allow water to go out into the tissues where the toxins are, to dilute the toxins. If you have enough toxicity in your legs, then you’re going to have fluid accumulation there to try to dilute those toxins,” Cowden explains. “The lymphatic system can get clogged up for lots of different reasons.
The lymphatic system is commonly clogged up in people in the United States, because they have a love affair with dairy products and wheat products, both of which produce thick sticky mucoid material in the lymphatic system, which clogs it up. If they’ll get rid of the dairy and wheat products, then the lymphatic system becomes more fluid and able to clear toxins from the tissues through the lymphatic system.”
If you have an extremely weak heart, you may not be able to pump blood properly. This is also known as right-sided congestive heart failure. A very common cause of that is coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) deficiency. According to Cowden, taking CoQ10, addressing any emotional issues and eliminating heavy metals will help the swelling to go away even in these more serious cases.
Why Diuretics Are Not Ideal for Treatment of Hypertension
Hypertension is a more complex issue. The first line of treatment and the No. 1 recommended drug for treating hypertension are thiazide diuretics. However, thiazide diuretics cause chromium wasting, which then creates insulin resistance, which in turn raises your blood pressure. As noted by Cowden:
“That seems to be a pretty oxymoronic way to do that. We really need to try to find a better solution. Most people who have hypertension emotionally feel under pressure to do something or not do something. If they can recognize what that is and resolve that emotional conflict, their blood pressure usually goes down quite a bit …
If you get the plaque reversed in the arteries, then the [arteries] are no longer stiff, so then you don’t have a systolic hypertension. You don’t need the drug, because your blood pressure comes down just by getting rid of the plaque in the arteries.
How do you do that? In the early ’90s, I was giving patients with advanced atherosclerotic disease proteolytic enzymes 30 minutes before food, a clean diet, supplements, nutrients, magnesium, vitamin C, vitamin E, etc., and reversing 80% to 90% plaque in the arteries down to 20% and 30% plaque in just three or four months.
We proved that with the ultrasound Doppler duplex imaging. If we can do that, then why are we doing open heart surgeries, carotid endarterectomies and all that other stuff? It’s because people are not educated about what’s possible.
If they haven’t been told that this could be done by their medical doctor, then they don’t believe that it’s possible. Unfortunately, there are a lot of things the medical doctor doesn’t know, because they weren’t taught it in medical school.”
The Benefits of Proteolytic Enzymes
Proteolytic enzymes are an effective strategy not only for decreasing atherosclerotic plaque but also for thinning your blood, lowering your risk of a blood clot. Cowden’s father was placed on Coumadin by his doctor, which caused him to bleed profusely whenever he hurt himself working outside. Cowden suggested proteolytic enzymes instead, which his father was eager to try.
“He started that when he was about 60. He lived to be 80. He was on proteolytic enzymes 30 minutes before food twice a day for 20 years, without any more clots, without any more of the symptoms for which he was being treated with the sodium warfarin or the Coumadin.
Since then, I’ve treated several dozen other patients with the same strategy. As far as I know, there’s no peer-reviewed literature proving that this is so, but we have lots of anecdotal evidence … As far as I know, everybody has remained plaque-free.”
The enzymes Cowden uses for this purpose, in order of effectiveness are:
- Lumbrokinase, made from bacteria that live in the gut of the earthworm
- Nattokinase, a fermented soy product
- Serrapeptase, made from bacteria that grow in the gut of the silkworm
- Bromelain, obtained from pineapple stems
- Papaya leaf enzyme
“A person can be energetically tested for several of these enzymes to see which pair is the best pair and just rotate back and forth. Monday, Wednesday and Friday, one; Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday the other.
If they do enough of those, then usually they’ll have no clot formation,” he says. Proteolytic enzymes also combat tiny clots, frequently caused by chronic infections. The infection, wherever it is located, causes your body to produce excessive amounts of fibrin, a clot-producing agent.
This fibrin can plaster itself up against the capillary walls, restricting the delivery of oxygen from red blood cells through the capillary wall into the tissues.
The above-mentioned enzymes will strip away fibrin, allowing oxygen delivery through the capillary walls into tissues. Once the tissues are no longer starved of oxygen, they can go into aerobic metabolism instead of anaerobic metabolism, and when you’re in anaerobic metabolism, you don’t stimulate cancer growth and microbial growth. So, there are many related health benefits.
Collagen for Soft Tissue Injury and Repair
Reproduced from original article:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/07/02/collagen-for-soft-tissue-injury-repair.aspx
The original Mercola article may not remain on the original site, but I will endeavor to keep it on this site as long as I deem it to be appropriate.
Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola Fact Checked July 02, 2023
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- Collagen-based tissue includes tendons, ligaments, cartilage and fascia — basically connective tissue — all of which tend to get weaker and less elastic with age
- Connective tissue requires very specific raw materials, namely animal-based collagen such as gelatin and bone broth. Your body cannot produce the essential amino acids that make up collagen, so you must obtain them through your diet
- Collagen is high in glycine, proline and hydroxyproline, and relatively low in branched-chain amino acids, which are the primary ones that stimulate mTOR, muscle anabolism and muscle building. For that reason, it does not count toward your daily protein intake
- To optimize endurance, use a heart rate monitor and calculate your max heart rate based on the formula of 180 minus your age. This formula gives you your maximum aerobic function
- 180 minus your age is the heart rate at which enough oxygen is being put through your body to fuel fat burning, and to not put you into glycogen or sugar burning
Editor’s Note: This article is a reprint. It was originally published October 14, 2018.
Mark Sisson, a former elite endurance athlete that qualified for the 1980 U.S. Olympic marathon trials, founder of the popular website Mark’s Daily Apple and a leader in the paleo movement, was one of the first to help me understand the importance of burning fat for fuel.
Here — after we cover some of the basic benefits of high-intensity interval training and strength training, we segue to the topic at hand, namely the use of collagen for soft tissue injuries and repair, along with a few other useful fitness tips.
“How I came to [learn about collagen] was how I arrived at a lot of my epiphanies — I had a life crisis. I play ultimate Frisbee once a week, every week for the last 15 years now. But about five or six years ago, I started to develop severe Achilles’ heel tendinosis.
Ultimate Frisbee is a very fast-paced game … There’s lots of running … [and it] requires a lot of agility, a lot of side-to-side quick movement, as well as raw speed …
I found over a couple of years, in my late 50s, that I was starting to get these real severe Achilles’ problems. I couldn’t sprint. My Achilles’ were really tender. They were getting thick. I went to see an orthopedic surgeon [who] said, ‘You have severe Achilles’ tendinosis.’ I go, ‘What does that mean?’ ‘Well, you’re screwed, basically. You can’t play sports again’ …
An orthopedist in Southern California said, ‘Well, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to take the back of your heel, slit it open and scrape the Achilles’ down to the raw meat. We’re going to pack it up in a cast for three months, then you’ll do nine months of rehab and you’ll be 85% of where you were.’ I’m like, ‘No. That’s not going to happen, Doc … ‘
I went back to my house and said, ‘You know, there’s something I was doing wrong here.’ I started to do the analysis and I thought, ‘Here I am stressing my Achilles’, which is attached to the calves, so I’m really stressing the calves, the plantar fascia and everything around it, on a regular basis. I’m not giving my body the raw materials it needs to recover from that stress. It is that simple.'”
Collagen for Soft Tissue Repair
Collagen-based tissue includes tendons, ligaments, cartilage and fascia — basically connective tissue — all of which tend to get weaker and less elastic with age. Injuries are also worsened by the fact that there’s very little blood supply in connective tissue, which slows down recovery.
While a muscle injury is fairly easy to fix and recover from, connective tissue require very specific raw materials, namely animal-based collagen such as gelatin and bone broth. This collagen material is amino acids that get incorporated into your body to become this matrix of connective tissue. Sisson adds:
“Even if you say, ‘Well, I can get all of these raw materials from the amino acids in the meat that I’m eating, or in the protein drinks that I’m drinking,’ the reality is you can get some of those, but not in the quantities that you probably need, particularly as you get older and particularly if you start stressing these tendons, ligaments, cartilage and other connective tissue and fascia.
Having done the analysis, I started supplementing 40 grams of collagen a day. Within four months, my Achilles’ were better. I could have two scars on the back of my leg and be all pissed off about the surgery that I had that didn’t quite come out the way I was promised.
But I’m here telling you that I just got off the track, where I ran 32 seconds for a 200 at age 65. And that’s the first time I’ve been to the track in probably six months …
If you talk about gelatin, collagen peptide or collagen bone broth, we’re talking about the same peptide. We’re talking about glycine, proline, hydroxyprolines — some of these really specific amino acids — dipeptide, tripeptide that actually cross into the bloodstream as a unit and get incorporated into the body.”
Your Body Selectively Takes Collagen Into Stressed Areas
The Achilles’ tendon can be envisioned as a coiled spongy spring, full of fluid. Each time you stress it, the tendon tightens, pushing the fluid out. As the tendon relaxes, fluid flows back in. Sisson cites research showing that when subjects were given a collagen drink 15 minutes before performing a jump rope exercise, collagen peptides in the bloodstream surrounding the tissue were incorporated at over two times the normal speed.
“That was a fascinating study to me, which indicated that it’s really happening the way I envisioned it — that the body will selectively take in these collagen peptides into the area being stressed, particularly if you don’t have any other source of raw material in your diet,” Sisson says.
“Even in the paleo world … you’re eating choice cuts of meat, but you’re not gnawing on the bones or the skin or the tendons or other nether parts of the animal … Most of us don’t make bone broth anymore. We’ve had decades of not having any access to collagen.
I see it in pro-sports, where athletes are tearing anterior cruciate ligaments (ACLs), medial collateral ligaments (MCLs), tendons and all kinds of stuff. I’m going to have to say that a lot of this is because their diet is so horrible to begin with, and then they don’t take in supplemental collagen that I think would be probably wise on their part.”
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The Difference Between Collagen and Other Protein
As mentioned, the collagen Sisson recommends for soft tissue repair is high in glycine, proline and hydroxyproline, and relatively low in branched-chain amino acids, which are the primary ones that stimulate the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), muscle anabolism and muscle building.
For that reason, while 40 grams sounds like a lot, it does not count toward your daily protein intake, which I typically recommend keeping around 0.5 grams per pound of lean body mass. Above that, you start running the risk of overstimulating mTOR, which speeds aging and raises your risk for chronic disease, including cancer.
Since mTOR is not stimulated by collagen peptides, you don’t have to worry about exceeding your protein intake when taking a collagen supplement.
“Twenty grams a day is for my maintenance level of collagen,” Sisson says. “But you hit the nail on the head. Collagen is such a unique protein blend of amino acids and it’s so specific to collagenous material in the body that it does not sustain life.
When you buy a collagen product and it says 10 grams per serving or 20 grams per serving of protein, because it is protein and it has to say protein on it, when you look at the supplement facts panel on the back, it’s zero of the daily value. In other words, it cannot sustain life.”
Back in the ’80s, a 500-calorie-a-day liquid protein diet was all the rage. Medifast and OPTIFAST were two of the big brand names. This liquid protein was in fact collagen. People believed they were getting 500 calories in the form of protein on a daily basis, but because it was collagen, it was not enough to live on. People actually died on this diet.
I actually had a number of patients on this program in the mid-’80s before I understood nutrition. Now I realize that a 500-calorie partial fast can actually be very healthy but should only be done a few times a week, and must be cycled in with a high-protein, high-carb diet in a really specific sequence. Also, there are better proteins than collagen for a partial fast. I go into great details on this in my book, “Keto Fast.”
“They had congestive heart failure, arrhythmias and things like that, because it was not the right kind of protein to build muscle,” Sisson says. On the other hand, as long as you didn’t pursue it for too long or too exclusively, you could significantly improve health as it maximized autophagy.
“That’s the good news-bad news … A lot of people wound up having great skin, hair and nails and lost some weight. That was the upshot of that. Anyway, it was such an interesting concept that even the World Health Organization, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration say, ‘You can’t live on collagen protein.’
They’re basically acknowledging that if you eat collagen protein, you’re doing it for skin, hair, nails, tendons, ligaments, connective tissue, bones and fascia — a lot of structural components in our body that are well-served by doing a daily dose of some form of collagen.
That’s also why bone broth has become all the rage in the health food circles in the last five years … Here’s my shameless plug. I had such a great experience with supplementary collagen, I created a collagen product line within my Primal Kitchen food line, as I am so clear on people needing to supplement with collagen on a regular basis.”
Types of Collagen
While 28 different types of collagen have been scientifically identified, most supplements will contain one or more of just three of these, which are known simply as:1,2,3
- Type 1 — collagen found in skin/hide, tendon, scales and bones of cows, pigs, chicken and fish
- Type 2 — formed in cartilage and typically derived from poultry
- Type 3 — fibrous protein found in bone, tendon, cartilage and connective tissues of cows, pigs, chicken and fish
Types 1, 2 and 3 comprise 90% of the collagen in your body.4 When talking about collagen supplements, you also need to know the difference between unhydrolyzed (undenatured) or hydrolyzed (denatured) collagen. In their natural, hydrolyzed state, collagen molecules are poorly absorbed due to their large size.
Hydrolyzation refers to a processing technique that breaks the molecules down into smaller fragments, thereby enhancing intestinal absorption. For this reason, most collagen products are hydrolyzed. As for the difference between collagen and gelatin: Collagen is the raw material and gelatin is what you get when you cook the collagen.5
“Bovine-sourced collagen are the basic element, probably covering 80% of the bases,” Sisson says. “There are different sources of different blends of collagen peptides. Some are higher in proline. Some are higher in glycine. Some are higher in hydroxyproline.
But they all have kind of the same sorts of dietary peptides, just at relatively different levels and different amounts … And then we have hyaluronic acid, which is another factor in some of these products.
I’m basically saying that [you can] cover 80% of your needs with a 100% grass fed, naturally derived bovine source of Type 1 and a little bit of Type 2 collagen … As for the rest, you’re just splitting hairs. That’s how I feel about the Type 1 and Type 2 stuff.”
Nonorganic Collagen, Bone Broth Products Likely CAFO-Derived
Keep in mind that many collagen supplements are made from animal parts derived from animals raised in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), and may contain unwanted contaminants, including heavy metals,6 chemicals such as butylparaben, and drugs,7 including antibiotics.
If you do not consume factory-farmed/CAFO meats, you likely should not be consuming CAFO collagen and bone broth products. While CAFO-derived collagen, bone meal or bone broth may not be acutely toxic, purchasing food products from factory farms is a problematic practice.
I recommend eating mostly organic and grass fed foods — and that includes collagen from these sources — as each and every source will add to your overall toxic load. To avoid exposure to CAFO-related contaminants, make sure the product is “100% USDA Organic” and/or certified grass fed by the AGA.
On Dosage
When it comes to dosage, there are no hard and fast rules. Sisson, being willing to experiment on himself, decided for a larger-than-normal dose and took 20 grams of collagen twice a day to start. After a few months, he cut down to a maintenance dose of 20 grams a day.
“I thought, I’m just going to bathe my Achilles’ in this raw material,” he says. “I think there’s a rate limiter on how much your body can absorb … It’s not like you’re going to hurt yourself … [But] you still have to deaminate the excess.
Some of it might be converted into glucose, because there’s that whole gluconeogenic aspect of excess protein. I used to think I had high protein requirements but all of a sudden I was like, ‘Geez, my daily protein requirements might be 50 to 75 grams a day.’
I feel great doing that. Anything I eat beyond that isn’t building more muscle, isn’t causing me to burn more fat. It’s just extra calories that the body has to figure out what to do with.
Again, do I convert it to glucose and burn it? Do I convert it to glucose and store it as fat? Do I deaminate it and pee it out? Do I keep it temporarily in the nebulous amino acid pool or sink that’s in the body?
In the last couple of years as I look more into this whole protein thing, I don’t even think in terms of meal-to-meal or even day-to-day. I sort of look at protein intake in three and four day clumps.
If I get 180 grams of protein over three days, I don’t care how it came in or when it came in. That’s enough to keep me going, because the body is so efficient at recycling, particularly when you’re fat-adapted and keto-adapted. It’s so efficient at not feeling like it needs to dispose of that protein.”
The Importance of Pulsing Your Protein and Carb Intake
Personally, I’ve found I need to pulse my protein intake. I’ll restrict it below 15 to 40 grams a day a few days a week, then increase it to 70 to 100 grams on my strength training days or post partial fast. While you don’t want to chronically stimulate mTOR, you also don’t want to chronically suppress it. So, pulsing or cycling seems to be the best way to go about it.
The same can be said for carbohydrates. While nutritional ketosis requires you to severely restrict net carbs while increasing dietary fats, chronic carb restriction is inadvisable. This is why I recommend cycling in and out of ketosis once you’ve established that your body can efficiently burn fat. As explained by Sisson:
“I don’t like the word ‘ketogenesis’ because it connotes an excess of ketones in the bloodstream. To think that you’re going to have an excess of ketones in the bloodstream all the time for the rest of your life is ridiculous. I talk about keto in the same breath that I talk about fat-adapted and keto-adapted. The term I use is ‘metabolic flexibility.’
We want to be able to burn fat when it’s available on our plate. We want to burn fat when there’s no food available. We want to burn glycogen when it’s in our muscles and there’s none available.
We want to burn carbohydrate on our plates, and when it’s available [as] glucose in the bloodstream. We want to burn ketones when there’s no glucose. And, as the very last resort, we want to burn amino acids because it is a substrate in the absence of other substrates.
But metabolic flexibility means we’ve developed this internal combustion system that is equally adapted, extracting calories from all these substrates, not just dependent on carbohydrate every three or four hours, which was the old paradigm. But certainly, also not just adhering to a keto diet for the rest of your life with no more than 20 or 30 grams of carbs a day.”
Living Your Best Life
While I believe wearable fitness trackers, like an Oura ring that has no EMF when it is airplane mode, can be valuable, Sisson is a self-proclaimed “anti-wearable tech person.” Instead, he believes it’s important to become more intuitive in your approach to lifestyle choices.
“How do you look, feel and perform? When you wake up in the morning and you do a workout, are you ready for that workout? Do you feel like doing that workout? Are you excited about the workout? Do you have enough energy when you wake up in the morning?
If you’re not hungry, do you still have to eat? No. If you’re not hungry, why are you going to eat in the first place? A lot of this is just developing an intuitive sense so that even if you eat the wrong thing, you don’t beat yourself up …
I’m trying to take this high-tech movement and swing it back to using the information to get you to identify when you are ready to do something you’re not yet ready to do. A good example would be a heart rate monitor. I train with a heart rate monitor …
Now, after years of using one, I know what my heart rate is at different levels. In fact, the only reason I ever used a heart rate monitor after the first couple of years was to keep me below a certain level [of exertion], because I knew if I went above a certain level, I was in that black hole of [over]training.”
How a Heart Monitor Can Improve Your Endurance
Sisson has a counterintuitive recommendation and approach to endurance training. While 220 minus your age is your theoretical max heart rate, Sisson recommends using 180 minus your age. This formula gives you your maximum aerobic function. What this means is that that’s the heart rate at which enough oxygen is being put through your body to fuel fat burning, and to not put you into glycogen or sugar burning.
“A lot of people say, ‘I’m 40 years old. That means I have a max training heartrate of 140. But Mark, I can train at 160 and 165 all day long. I could run six-minute miles. And when I do what you say, and I train at 140 as a max heartrate, I’m doing nine-and-a-half- to 10-minute miles. I’m almost walking. That can’t be accurate.’
My response is, ‘It’s entirely accurate. Here’s the issue. You perform well as a sugar burner. You’re a great sugar burner. When you are training at 165 or 170 heart rate and you feel pretty good about it, you’re great at burning sugar. But you suck at burning fat. The fact that you suck at burning fat is demonstrated by the fact that you can’t do much work at 140 beats a minute.’
How Mark Allen became the premiere Ironman in the world is because Dr.[Phil] Maffetone coached him … [to keep] that metric. They go for long periods of time, never exceeding that heart rate … They don’t use speed or miles per hour to dictate how fast they’re going.
Over time, what they find is they become more and more efficient at that heartrate. All of a sudden, those nine-and-a-half-minute miles become eight-and-a-half-minute miles, and then eight-minute miles, and then seven-minute miles.
The next thing you know, this guy who’s 40 years old complaining about how slow he’s going, if he’s done it for several weeks, he’s all of a sudden going, ‘Mark, I’m running six-minute miles at 140 beats a minute. Imagine what I can do when I get in a race and then I’m throttling it up at 160 or 165 beats a minute.’
At six-minute miles at 140 beats a minute, we know based on how hard the heart is not working, that he’s burning fat, because he would not be able to supply that much oxygen to fuel that amount of work on sugar.
You have to understand the science. But when you do, and you realize as long as you’re willing to spend time in this zone, you become more and more efficient. That is what endurance is all about. It’s about how efficient you are.”
More Information
For more fitness, diet and health tips, check out Sisson’s blog on marksdailyapple.com. There you can also find his books, which include “The Primal Blueprint,” “The Primal Connection,” “Primal Endurance” and “The 21-Day Total Body Transformation.” If you subscribe to his newsletter you get a free copy of his fitness e-book.
His latest book, “The Keto Reset Diet,” is available on Amazon and ketoreset.com. Sisson also sells whey, collagen protein, unsweetened organic ketchup, mayonnaise and salad dressings made with avocado oil on primalkitchen.com.
- 1 Nutraingredients.com March 19, 2015
- 2 Charlotte’s Book, Collagen Supplements
- 3 Amino-collagen.com, Types of Collagen
- 4 Woundresearch.com, A Review of Collagen and Collagen-Based Wound Dressings
- 5 Paleo Leap, Collagen Versus Gelatin
- 6 Rodale’s Organic Life May 19, 2017
- 7 Consumer Wellness Center October 5, 2017
The Benefits of Curcumin in Tumor Treatments
Reproduced from original article:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/06/23/curcumin-benefits.aspx
The original Mercola article may not remain on the original site, but I will endeavor to keep it on this site as long as I deem it to be appropriate.
Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola Fact Checked June 23, 2023
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- Curcumin — a derivative of turmeric and the pigment that gives the curry spice turmeric its yellow-orange color — has been extensively researched
- Curcumin appears to be universally useful for just about every type of cancer, and has the most evidence-based literature supporting its use against cancer of any nutrient
- It has the ability to modulate genetic activity and expression, both by destroying cancer cells, and by promoting healthy cell function
- Research has also shown that it works synergistically with certain chemotherapy drugs, enhancing the elimination of cancer cells
Editor’s Note: This article is a reprint. It was originally published March 2, 2014.
Cancer is one of the leading causes of death. What if there were a safe, natural herb that could work for nearly every type of cancer?
According to Dr. William LaValley, who focuses most of his clinical work on the treatment of cancer, curcumin — a derivative of turmeric and the pigment that gives the curry spice turmeric its yellow-orange color — may fit the bill. It’s a natural compound that has been extensively researched, and has been found to have numerous health applications.
Like me, LaValley was trained in general medicine, but he’s devoted a considerable amount of time to understanding the biochemical pathways that can support health nutritionally. In 1982, he participated in an exchange program to the People’s Republic of China, where he got first-hand experience with the ancient practices of traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture.
“One of the important messages that I learned there was that natural products, natural molecules, from plants and animals that are already available in nature, have been used by the Chinese for at least hundreds, probably thousands of years. That deeply changed my perspective in the world of medicine,” he says.
“I came back to medical school, and thereafter, looked at how I could integrate the perspective of conventional pharmaceutical administration as well as natural extract, natural product administration.”
Curcumin Has Potent Anticancer Activity
In 2005, he took a 75% sabbatical from clinical practice to immerse himself in the science of molecular biology, specifically the molecular biology of cancer. He also devoted approximately 9,000 to 9,500 hours building a relational database from the PubMed literature about the molecular biology of cancer.
One important lesson he learned through that venture is that the understanding of molecular biology can be applied across a range of diseases and symptoms described in the scientific literature. That knowledge can be applied by searching PubMed and other related databases, looking at the relevant molecular pathways involved.
“In learning the molecular biology of cancer pathways, and in learning that what the evidence actually shows for the effect of natural product extracts on various relevant molecular targets in various cancers, we see that there’s actually quite a large amount of evidence that supports using various molecules, natural products, and pharmaceuticals that are already approved and that have been around for a long time to affect anti-cancer activity along that pathway at that target.
That’s called molecularly targeted anti-cancer treatment, and it’s widely practiced in oncology today.
What’s not widely practiced is the use of the natural products for the molecularly targeted anticancer activity. I provide that for my patients because the evidence base suggests and supports the use of these treatment recommendations.”
Curcumin — A ‘Universal’ Cancer Treatment?
Interestingly, curcumin appears to be universally useful for just about every type of cancer,1 which is really odd since cancer consists of a wide variety of different molecular pathologies. You wouldn’t necessarily suspect that there would be one herb that would work for most of them. LaValley explains how he came to this conclusion:
“I went back to the literature and looked at how I can support the decision-making process and the recommendations that I’m making for treatment from the scientific literature, including literature that goes from the treatment of humans with oral products like pharmaceuticals or natural products.
This is where I learned about this molecule called curcumin, all the way down to its use in animals and then its use in test tubes or petri dish … One of the amazing things about curcumin is that this molecule has some profound anti-inflammatory activity and has activity in many molecular targets.
There are molecules that are in the cells, and those molecules interact with each other along certain pathways or tracks. The traffic of that interaction, the signals that are transferred in that trafficking of information in the molecules, presents many different targets or molecular-specific complexes.”
As explained by LaValley, whether the curcumin molecule causes an increase in traffic or activity of a particular molecular target, or a decrease/inhibition of activity, studies repeatedly show that the end result is a potent anticancer activity. Furthermore, curcumin does not adversely affect healthy cells, suggesting it selectively targets cancer cells. Research has also shown that it works synergistically with certain chemotherapy drugs, enhancing the elimination of cancer cells.
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Curcumin Destroys Cancer in Multiple Ways
Curcumin has the most evidence-based literature2 supporting its use against cancer of any nutrient, including vitamin D, which also has a robust base. Interestingly, this also includes the metabolite of curcumin and its derivatives, which are also anticancerous.
Curcumin has the ability to modulate genetic activity and expression — both by destroying cancer cells and by promoting healthy cell function. It also promotes anti-angiogenesis, meaning it helps prevent the development of additional blood supply necessary for cancer cell growth. As for its effect on molecular pathways, curcumin can affect more than 100 of them, once it gets into the cell. More specifically, curcumin has been found to:
| Inhibit the proliferation of tumor cells | Decrease inflammation |
| Inhibit the transformation of cells from normal to tumor | Inhibit the synthesis of a protein thought to be instrumental in tumor formation |
| Help your body destroy mutated cancer cells so they cannot spread throughout your body | Help prevent the development of additional blood supply necessary for cancer cell growth (angiogenesis) |
Why Whole Turmeric Is Ineffective
Unfortunately, while there’s some curcumin in whole turmeric, there’s not enough in the regular spice to achieve clinically relevant results. The turmeric root itself contains only about 3% curcumin concentration. Another major limitation of curcumin as a therapeutic agent is that it is poorly absorbed. When taken in its raw form, you’re only absorbing about 1% of the available curcumin.
“The natural product industry has developed a standard of a 95% concentration of curcumin,” LaValley explains. “Initially, years ago, that was what we had available for patients. Even at that, taking a 95% concentration orally in a capsule, only 1% of that could be absorbed. In order to get amounts of curcumin in the bloodstream that are reasonable to have therapeutic effect, people had to take large amounts of curcumin …
In searching the literature, I found that a way to change that, to dramatically increase the bioavailability, is actually a very simple process of bringing water to a boil, putting those capsules or some dry powder (I use it by the teaspoon), and boiling it for 10 to 12 minutes. That increases the amount of curcumin dissolved in water from that 1% amount up to 12% or so.
That amount is a vast number of curcumin molecules that are now in a bioavailable or absorbable form.”
However, while this is certainly doable, it’s really inconvenient, and great care must be taken to prevent staining your clothes and kitchen surfaces. It’s a significant enough problem to have been dubbed “yellow kitchen syndrome,” as it’s virtually impossible to get the stains out. Turmeric is in fact an excellent dyeing agent for fabrics, rendering them a yellow-orange color.
Convenience and efficiency has driven many of the changes in the forms of curcumin in later years. Because it’s a fat-loving or lipophilic molecule, many newer preparations now include some sort of oil or fat, which improves its absorbability and bioavailability. Such preparations typically have seven to eight times higher absorption than the raw, unprocessed 95% concentration of dry powder. There are also newer sustained release preparations, which LaValley prefers and recommends.
The Connection Between Cancer and Insulin Resistance
If you are overweight, or have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and/or diabetes, then in all likelihood insulin and leptin resistance is a factor. Insulin and leptin resistance is also a very common factor among cancer patients.
From my perspective, a ketogenic diet (with or without intermittent fasting) would be a prudent treatment strategy to resolve that underlying problem. Once you’ve normalized your insulin and leptin, you don’t necessarily need to maintain a ketogenic diet, if you find it too restrictive.
“I agree with you that a ketogenic diet is really appropriate in many cases, probably the significant majority of cases,” LaValley says. “It’s been known for probably 80 years or longer that solid tumors, and some of the blood cancers, are sugar-loving. Another term is that they are addicted to sugar.
I use [a] PET scan to demonstrate to patients that here is objective proof that the tumors you have in your body are sugar-avid. They’re taking up sugar at a rate much higher than the other regular healthy cells. I want to drive home that message, so that they are motivated to alter their diet to have a low, low carb intake, causing their body to generate additional nutrient supply molecules called ketones …
What that means is that we’re trying to provide an anticancer antagonistic pressure on the cancer cells by reducing the amount of sugar that’s readily available for uptake by reducing the easily available sugar in the diet and compensating for the nutrient reduction and sugar [reduction] by increasing healthy fats.”
Cutting Down on Protein May Be Useful for Cancer Patients
It would also be prudent to assess your protein intake. Many Americans eat far more protein than required for optimal health. The reason for this is because your body can actually use excess protein to stimulate carbohydrate production.
Excess protein also stimulates the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathways, which are useful for building muscles but can be detrimental when treating cancer, as mTOR is a pathway that increases cellular proliferation. (Interestingly, the pharmaceutical drug metformin, which has anticancer activity, also inhibits mTOR, and it turns out that curcumin has a very similar effect.)
The formula I recommend for assessing how much protein you might need in your diet is from nutritionist Dr. Ron Rosedale, which calls for 1 gram of high-quality protein per kilogram of lean body mass, or about half a gram per pound of lean body mass.
As an example, if your body fat mass is 20%, your lean mass is 80% of your total body weight. So, if your total weight is 200 pounds; you would then divide 160 by 2.2 to convert pounds to kilograms and come up with 72.7 grams of protein. If you are doing vigorous exercises or are pregnant, you can add up to another 25% or another 18 grams in this illustration to increase your total to 90 grams per day.
More Information
LaValley is available for consultation on a wide variety of health challenges, including cancer, and he’s licensed to practice medicine in the U.S. and Canada. His medical clinic is located in Chester, Nova Scotia, where he sees patients. Americans can fly there either through Chicago or Newark. His office number in Canada is 902-275-4555. In the U.S. it’s 512-794-8907.
He also spends time in Austin, Texas, where he conducts research. When there, he’s available to consult for other physicians and their patients. He currently is completing a book explaining the science and benefits of molecular integrative oncology (what he calls “the other half of cancer treatment”), to be published in 2023.
“For instance, if a patient has pancreatic cancer and the physician wants to implement one of the protocols that I provide, I will do a consultation with that physician’s patient and then make recommendations to that physician for implementation,” he explains. “In that way, patients are able to get it locally without having to travel to Nova Scotia …
It’s a challenge right now because there’s so much information that’s not readily known by so many physicians that they become afraid. I think one of the biggest issues, certainly in U.S. and Canada, is that when a physician wants to administer one of these natural products, or several of them, as well as some of the off-label pharmaceuticals for their anti-cancer usage, they are afraid of recriminations or disciplinary actions.
That is, I think, very unfortunate, because the evidence base does exist for it, and it’s consistent with the way that other types of conventional medicine or practice using off-label pharmaceuticals as well.
I think that the most important movement that needs to occur is for the patients to recognize their own value in the decision-making process and demand that they have access to these therapeutic choices because they’re available, they’re supported in the evidence base, and they have the right to ask for them rather than to just accept whatever the physician is otherwise offering in the conventional realm.”
A Surprising Reason Why You May Need More Carbs in Your Diet
Reproduced from original article:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/05/21/surprising-reason-why-you-may-need-more-carbs.aspx
The original Mercola article may not remain on the original site, but I will endeavor to keep it on this site as long as I deem it to be appropriate.
Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola Fact Checked May 21, 2023
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- A ketogenic diet can be very useful initially when transitioning people who are metabolically inflexible. However, continuing in ketosis long term can lead to problems, including stubborn weight gain or the inability to lose unwanted weight
- The reason for this has to do with cortisol. Your body needs glucose, and when deprived for too long, your body will release cortisol to stimulate the production of glucose by your liver. Cortisol also promotes inflammation and central obesity, so you don’t want chronically elevated cortisol levels
- Your metabolic rate is strongly affected by the type of sugar you consume. High fructose corn syrup promotes ill health while whole fruit, raw honey and pure organic cane sugar are readily metabolized without promoting weight gain
- When adding in more carbs, you also need to reduce your fat intake to avoid elevating your triglycerides
- Restricting dietary fat and/or blocking the oxidation of fat inside of the cell have strong therapeutic effects against cancer by forcing the cell out of its excessive fatty acid oxidation state
In this interview, Georgi Dinkov and I continue our discussion about diet, diving into some of the finer details that can make or break your health. Dinkov is a student of Ray Peat, who passed away around Thanksgiving 2022, leaving behind a legacy of iconoclastic wisdom on how to optimize biological health.
For example, a ketogenic diet can be very useful initially when transitioning people who are metabolically inflexible, which is about 95% of the population of the United States. So, in the short term, the vast majority of people can benefit from going keto. However, if you continue in ketosis long term, you’re going to run into problems.
Elevated Cortisol Leads to Central Obesity
As just one example, while weight loss is a typical response when going on a ketogenic diet, months later, maintaining that weight loss often becomes a struggle again. Dinkov experienced this firsthand. Once he started following Ray Peat’s recommendations, he lost the weight again and kept it off.
“My take is it’s an endocrine problem,” Dinkov says. “So if you’re struggling with weight you cannot lose, I think it’s a good idea to do a blood work [panel] for the steroids … Every single person that has been struggling with excessive weight that has emailed [me] their blood results, without exception, their cortisol is either high-normal or above the range, both the AM and the PM value.
Their thyroid is less than optimal, in fact, pretty bad for most people … They’re at the upper limit of normal. A very large number of people are basically hypothyroid … I think we are eating foods that are lowering our metabolic rate. We’re living an excessively stressful lifestyle.
That’s probably not a surprise for anybody. Many people think, well, stress is good for you. It’s good as a hormetic response in an acute situation, but not when you have chronically elevated cortisol. Every doctor will tell you if you have a chronic elevated cortisol, you will develop the so-called spectrum of Cushing syndrome …
One of the defining features of elevated cortisol is that you have central obesity. So that, to me, is really the problem. We have higher than desirable levels of stress, suboptimal diet, and we’re surrounded by a number of different endocrine disrupters which are now proven to reliably cause obesity in animal models, even in very small amounts. Most of those are found in plastics.”
How High Fructose Corn Syrup Causes Disease
One factor that makes a big difference in your metabolic rate is the type of sugar you consume. Contrary to popular belief, there’s a dramatic difference between high fructose corn syrup and cane sugar. They’re really two different foods. If the high fructose corn syrup is properly processed to remove all starch, then it’s very similar to cane sugar because it’s about 55% fructose and 45% glucose.
However, studies have shown beverages sweetened with high fructose corn syrup contain a tremendous amount of starch, which isn’t accounted for in the calories listed on the label. Once the starch is factored in, the caloric content of many sodas can easily quadruple that on the label, so you’re getting FAR more calories than you think.
Additionally, because the starch is made up of such tiny particles, they can enter your blood circulation unprocessed via your digestive system, potentially causing an allergic reaction.
They can also trigger a low-grade inflammatory reaction, which will trigger the release of histamine, nitric oxide and serotonin. As noted by Dinkov, if you’re sneezing and have itchy eyes even though it’s not allergy season, you may well be having a reaction to something you ate or drank, and high fructose corn syrup may be the culprit.
Starch particles also serve as fuel for pathogenic bacteria in your gut, and the endotoxins from these bacteria contribute to inflammatory conditions. Small intestine bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) is one example of what can happen, especially if you’re on a proton pump inhibitor, as these drugs decrease the amount of stomach acid you’re producing. Stomach acid is there not only to help with digestion but also to keep bacteria in check.
“If you’re not producing a sufficient amount of acid, you’re going to get bacteria colonizing your small intestine, either from food or creeping up from the large intestine. And that’s not a good thing. Basically … the portion of the intestine that is supposed to be clean and just focused on absorbing food is now harboring a microbiome.
And then, if you give it any kind of a food that the bacteria can process, you’re increasing the turnover [which] result in the endotoxemia that is now accepted to cause a large number of diseases, especially cardiovascular disease, obesity and neurological disease.
Alzheimer’s has been conclusively tied to chronic low-grade endotoxemia. They’re still claiming there’s a genetic component to it, but they’re now admitting that endotoxin is a causative factor in Alzheimer’s disease,” Dinkov says.
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Cane Sugar Can Be Part of a Healthy Diet
Most people who embrace natural health believe sugar is a pernicious evil, but Peat’s and Dinkov’s position is that the negative effects are primarily caused by high fructose corns syrup, and that pure cane sugar can actually be a useful strategy to counteract some of the challenges that people can get into when on a strict low-carb diet. Dinkov explains:
“Cane sugar, if it’s pure, has a very different overall systemic health effect than high fructose corn syrup … I think most of the sugar sold in the crystal form, especially organic ones, is pretty safe. Heavy metal contamination used to be a problem in sugar distillation but it looks like most of the western countries have sorted this out …
Now, some people that have an issue with sugar are saying, ‘Well, it’s just empty calories and whatnot.’ Multiple studies demonstrated that honey, which is very similar in composition to plain white sugar, does not trigger the normal hyperglycemic response that most of the other simple carbohydrates do. In fact, it improves the hyperglycemia in Type 2 diabetic patients despite being pure sugar.
I think that’s the greatest confirmation that we have that sugar is not evil. It depends how you’re getting it and in what form. One animal study demonstrated that rats, when given free access to [Mexican] Coke sweetened with cane sugar, they were eating the equivalent of 8,000 calories daily … without gaining an ounce of fat.
So sugar is not dangerous. It’s perhaps the only nutrient that we evolved to metabolize for fuel. But the other two micronutrients, even though we can metabolize them as fuel, come with a lot of strings attached …
If you’re oxidizing PUFA, then all hell breaks loose. If you’re oxidizing saturated fats, it’s far less dangerous. But in the long run it still puts you, due to the Randle cycle, into the semi-diabetic state because it decreases your insulin sensitivity.
So pure sugar is what we are meant to oxidize for fuel. If you get it from ripe fruit, great. If you can get it from [raw unadulterated] honey, probably just as good if not even better. But if not, then the pure white variety, preferably organic, that you get from the store, I think is a very good source of most of the carb calories that you intend to eat throughout the day.”
The Glucose-Cortisol Link
In my book “Fat for Fuel,” I argued that healthy saturated fats generate fewer free radical species in the electron transport chain than sugar. However, I’m starting to revise my views on this, based on Peat’s work.
The problem is that if your glucose level is low because you’re on a low-carb diet, your body is going to compensate by self-generating glucose, and that stimulus to make glucose is part of the obesity puzzle, because one of the ways in which your body produces glucose is by secreting cortisol.
And, as explained by Dinkov, if your cortisol is chronically elevated, you end up with central obesity and chronic inflammation, which clearly isn’t good. So, you’ve got to have a certain amount of glucose, and it’s best to get it from your diet rather than forcing your liver to make it, as cortisol is then also being churned out. Dinkov explains:
“If glucose is oxidized properly going through the Krebs Cycle and electron transport chain, it generates more carbon dioxide per molecule of glucose oxidized than do fats.
Now, carbon dioxide has this kind of controversial role in medicine. It used to be considered a metabolic byproduct that could potentially be dangerous. People with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease have higher than normal levels of carbon dioxide in the blood.
But then, medicine started to look into this more closely, I think, over the last 10 years, outside of Dr. Pete’s research, and said, ‘Hm. Carbon dioxide seems to have a lot of positive effects in the body.’ One of them is vasodilation.
So basically, if your metabolism is not working properly, if you’re not oxidizing glucose properly, you’re not going to produce sufficient amounts of carbon dioxide. What happens then? Vasoconstriction. And since that is actually a problem, it raises blood pressure and all kinds of other things; all hell breaks loose. The body then releases an emergency vasodilator, known as nitric oxide. And that is now acquiring a bad reputation.
Even in mainstream medical circles, they’ve started seeing that people who are taking the drug nitroglycerin, which used to be the mainstream drug for angina — chest pain — for cardiovascular disease and blood pressure.
With nitroglycerin, you’ll quickly lower blood pressure. But over time, the inflammatory nature of nitric oxide ensures that these people actually get worse. And, in fact, most people who take nitroglycerin on a long-term basis die from a heart attack or ischemic stroke.
So, if you’re not eating enough glucose, your body will make it. And, in fact, the primary evolutionary role of cortisol, the acute role, is actually preventing blood glucose from dropping too low, because that will put you into a hypoglycemic coma.
In the longer run its secondary role is to dampen down inflammation. So really, the acute, the lifesaving role of cortisol on a daily basis, is to prevent you from dropping into a coma because your blood glucose went too low.
But we don’t want that process because it’s going to get the glucose from the tissues. So, we need glucose [in our diet]. I think even the ketogenic proponents are now getting to the point of saying, ‘We cannot be always in ketosis.’ In the long term, it’s not good.”
Will Sugar Feed Cancer?
In recent years, ketogenic diets have also been hailed for their ability to prevent and treat cancer, but even this may turn out to be a misunderstanding in the end.
“I think some of the ideas around glucose feeding cancer stem from two basic misunderstandings,” Dinkov says. “One is that cancer is an evil cell, genetically mutated, and that your only chance is to kill all of those cells because they’re not going away by themselves.
First of all, that’s not true. Spontaneous remissions of cancer are known, and they vary depending on the cancer. Prostate cancer has a pretty high rate of spontaneous remission … A paper that came about five years ago … from the MD Anderson cancer center in Texas … said it’s always been the position of medicine that cancerous mutations [happen] and after that, the cell becomes metabolically deranged.
But it looks like we’ve had it backwards. It’s the metabolic derangement that happens first, and, over time, this triggers the genetic mutations, because the cell, being in an energetic deficiency, cannot properly maintain its structure. That was a huge admission …
So what we need to be doing here is not trying to kill the cancer cell, because it is not a cancer cell. It is actually a normal cell that is metabolically deranged.
If we could compare it to anything, it’d be a diabetic cell [and] diabetes is now known to be caused by hyperlipidemia — too much fat in the body, too much fat in the blood. Basically, the cells are getting stuck in oxidizing fats, due to the Randle cycle.
And then, the glucose that’s floating around in diabetes, a good portion of it — because it cannot be metabolized — is being peed out … or you’re converting it into lactic acid. This [MD Anderson] paper said the exact same thing is happening in cancer.
We are seeing an abnormal rate of fatty acid oxidation, because the cell is stuck in the cycle due to oversupply of fat.
The glucose, the ‘cancer cell’ cannot actually metabolize it, but because the cell needs its glucose for a variety of purposes — not just synthesizing energy, but also synthesizing DNA and RNA, and those two … can only be synthesized from glucose, not from fats — the cancer cell says, ‘Oh, I’m in a state of extreme deficiency of glucose. Give me more.’
So, it increases the synthesis of these glucose transporters known as GLUT1 through GLUT4. Basically, that’s why when you give a patient with cancer a little bit of radioactive sugar, it accumulates mostly into the tumor, because the tumor has a much higher capacity for uptake of sugar.
However, and this is the key difference, it has a much lower capacity for oxidizing that sugar. So, you’re going to see a lot of radioactive sugar accumulation in the tumor, but most of it will get converted to lactic acid. So this paper that came out said, ‘We need to do something that gets the cell out of its stressed state.’
And I think we already agreed that excessive oxidation of fat is a stress state. Right? We don’t want to produce lactic acid, and as long as we are over-oxidizing fat, we will be producing lactic acid, and we will be uptaking more glucose …
Several studies have come out since then … and they said, ‘OK, how can we restrict the supply of fat?’ assuming the fat is the problem. There’s only really two macronutrients that can go to the cell. Assuming cancer is a metabolic disease, and assuming a cell can only oxidize fat or sugar, then if it’s not the sugar, it’s got to be the fat. There’s nothing else.
And if it’s not the mutations, if the mutations are secondary to the metabolic derangement, it’s got to be one of these two macronutrients that we can manipulate to actually try to cure the cancer. They already tried glucose restriction … That did not cure cancer. It did have a sensitizing effect to chemotherapy, but it did not result in actual cancer remission.
So now we’re back to the other micronutrient, restricting the supply of fat. Multiple studies … I have at least 30 on my blog … have shown that restricting lipolysis by administering the beta blocker propranolol … lowers lipolysis.
The way [propranolol] lowers blood pressure is by blocking adrenaline. If you’re blocking adrenaline, you’re also lowering lipolysis, because adrenaline is the primary activator of the hormone-sensitive lipase enzyme. Basically, you’re going to be restricting the supply of fat from your own tissues to the tumor.
What else can be done? Well, that’s not the only source of fat. You’re also getting it through the diet. Other studies have tried doing low-fat diets for cancer, and are getting actually good results. Not cure, but good results. The propranolol induced full remission in the cancer.”
Summary
Dinkov also cites research in which the beta oxidation inhibitor etomoxir, prescribed for heart disease, induced full remission in neuro glioblastoma, which is thought to be incurable. So, in summary, either restricting dietary fat or blocking the oxidation of fat inside the cell appears to have strong therapeutic effects against cancer by forcing the cell out of its excessive fatty acid oxidation state.
“And, once you do that, there’s no metabolic damage preventing the cell from oxidizing glucose,” Dinkov says. “It’s all functional. If you flood the cell with fat then, basically, that’s what the cell will oxidize, because it’s overabundant relative to the glucose that is getting to the cell. If you stop that process, or at least greatly restrict it, the cell starts oxidizing glucose again.”
The Devil in the Details
Here, I’d like to share a personal story. In an effort to adopt this new knowledge, I increased my carbohydrate intake to about 250 grams to 300 grams, depending on the day and the fruit availability. When I got my blood work back, I was surprised to find my triglycerides were in the low triple digits, just over 100, which is abnormal.
Normally, I’m closer to 50. In my clinical experience, elevated triglycerides is almost always related to excessive carbohydrate intake, which seems to conflict with what Dinkov just explained. But here’s the key: When you increase carbohydrates, you also have to lower fat. If you don’t, you could end up with complications, as just happened to me. So, now I’m lowering my fat intake. Dinkov confirms my experience:
“Most of the animal studies say, ‘High sugar diet causes this. High sugar diet causes that.’ But if you look at their diets, these animals are already on a high fat diet. All they did was add more sugar on top of it. Well, of course, in a situation like that, you’re going to have an increase in the triglycerides, increase in LDL cholesterol, because the body can synthesize cholesterol from the sugars.
So, you’re going to get these biomarkers associated with cardiovascular disease to increase, but it’s actually not really a fair comparison. What you should be doing is keeping the diets isocaloric, the same. And also, not increase the total amount of calories, just replace some of that fat with sugar …
Another thing that is probably important is that since there’s always some baseline lipolysis going on, when you’re increasing the carbohydrate intake, the excess that cannot get metabolized will get converted to triglycerides and then stored.
When you are increasing the carbohydrate intake, you should be decreasing the amount of fat. If you’re not, then at least you should be taking something that stimulates the oxidation of carbohydrate so that it doesn’t result in the raising of triglycerides.
Aspirin, caffeine, especially vitamin B-3 niacinamide, all of these are known to lower triglycerides and, by now, the consensus mechanism of action is that all three of these components are increasing the oxidation of carbohydrates.
So, if you’re increasing carbohydrates and you’re getting an increase in triglycerides, two things, either you’re eating too much fat or your baseline metabolic rate is not where it should be, so you can use some metabolic stimulation from these substances.”
In addition to increasing the oxidation of glucose as fuel, aspirin, caffeine and niacinamide may also inhibit the oxidation of fatty acids, specifically linoleic acid, and the most foundational strategy that anyone could implement to improve their health is to lower their linoleic acid, the omega-6 intake. These supplements will also lower inflammation, which in turn will lower your baseline cortisol.
The metabolite of aspirin, salicylic acid, also has an inhibitory infect on the enzyme 11-beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase Type 1. This enzyme synthesizes active cortisol from the inactive precursor cortisone.
“So, aspirin will actually lower your synthesis of cortisol directly, not just by lowering inflammation, but also lowering the actual synthesis of cortisol,” Dinkov explains. “A recent study demonstrated that baby aspirin, 81-100 milligrams daily, decreased fatty acid oxidation by about 30% …
Aspirin also has an anti-lipolytic effect, not as strong as niacinamide, but it’s got these three different things that are basically helping to lower both the supply of fat to the cell and excessive oxidation of fats even at these tiny dosages.”
Be mindful about the aspirin you use, though. Immediate-release aspirin made with cornstarch is the preferred version that is now hard to find. Extended-release aspirin is not recommended due to the additives they put in it. Your best option would be to use a salicylic acid or willow bark supplement.
Benefits of Vitamin E
Dinkov also reviews the benefits of other supplements, such as vitamin E, which inhibits lipolysis, improves glucose metabolism, acts as an estrogen antagonist and helps counteract much of the damage caused by linoleic acid and other polyunsaturated fats (PUFAs).
According to Dinkov, research suggests your need for vitamin E can be directly calculated by your PUFA intake. You need about 2 milligrams of vitamin E from all sources per gram of PUFA that you’re eating. So, if you’re eating 50 grams of PUFA daily — which is about 10 times what you should be getting — you need about 100 mg of total tocopherol.
Importantly, PUFAs aren’t just the omega-6s. It’s also omega-3. In the interview, Dinkov goes into detail as to why omega-3 supplements such as fish oil are mostly garbage and shouldn’t be used. I also recently wrote an article about this very topic.
Whole food, in this case, small fatty fish and wild-caught Alaskan salmon are really your best bet. It’s virtually impossible to find fish oil that’s not rancid. So, to review, when you’re calculating your PUFA intake you also need to include your omega-3s. Ideally, your daily PUFA intake would be below 10 grams.
Dinkov’s Dietary Suggestions
In closing, Dinkov reviews some of his top dietary recommendations for optimal health. No. 1 is keeping PUFA intake below 10 grams; below 5 grams would be even better. No. 2 is to avoid high fructose corn syrup when adding carbs. Stick with the simple sugars from ripe fruit, raw honey (make sure it’s not adulterated with high fructose corn syrup, as many are) and/or pure organic cane sugar.
As for the macro composition of your diet, equal amounts of fat, carbs and protein seem to be best for otherwise healthy individuals, so he recommends getting one-third or 33% of your daily calories from each. If you have metabolic problems or some kind of inflammatory disease, he recommends cutting down on fats.
Lower fat intake will also allow your body to digest protein better, as bile acids are released in response to fat, and bile interferes with the absorption of protein. Next, he recommends adding:
- Vitamin E, based on your PUFA intake (as detailed above)
- Aspirin or willow bark extract
- Niacinamide at a dose of 50 mg to a max of 100 mg, three times a day. In addition to antiobesity effects, niacinamide will also help synthesize NAD+, which has important health benefits
- Caffeine — BC powder, sold as a headache remedy, contains both aspirin and caffeine. According to Dinkov, research has shown that taking caffeine with aspirin increases the blood concentrations of both and prolongs their effects. Taking 50 mg of aspirin with 50 mg of caffeine can raise your metabolic rate by about 7% and keep it elevated for up to 12 hours
- Copper — Copper is the rate limiting factor for cytochrome c oxidase, (Complex 4). With aging, the amount of copper in that enzyme decreases while iron increases, and the less copper you have, the lower your metabolic rate. Ideally, get your copper from whole foods such as liver, oysters, shrimp or acerola cherry. If using a supplement, bisglycinate is a good option with high bioavailability
How to Apply This When Using Time-Restricted Eating (TRE)
If you’re using time-restricted eating, or considering starting, then this final side note will be important. If you’re metabolically inflexible, insulin resistant, and unable to easily switch between burning sugar and fat as your primary fuel, then a TRE program, such as that described by Dr. Mindy Pelz in my recent interview with her, may be quite beneficial, and this is true whether you’re eating a ketogenic diet or not.
However, once you regain your metabolic flexibility, which can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months, you will need to increase your eating window. The reason for this goes back to the glucose-cortisol connection, Dinkov explains in this interview. Your body needs glucose, and if you deprive it for too long, it will produce cortisol to stimulate your liver to make it.
This increased cortisol can contribute to chronic inflammation and cellular damage. Therefore, once you are no longer insulin resistant, it is best to vary your eating window between eight and 12 hours, and avoid going lower or higher than that window. It is also best to avoid eating before sunrise or after sunset and at least three hours before bedtime.
More Information
To learn more, be sure to listen to the entire interview, as we dive into far greater detail than what I’ve summarized here. Georgi is an absolute fire hydrant when it comes to biochemical details.
Also check out Georgi’s blog at www.haidut.me or follow him on Twitter. You can also obtain a major sampling of Ray Peat’s work for free by going to these two sites: wiki.chadnet.org/Ray-Peat and RayPeat.com.
How to Improve Medical Care: Include Treatment with Nutritional Supplements
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Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, April 28, 2023
by Michael Passwater and Richard Cheng, MD, PhD
OMNS (April 28, 2023) A recent Gallup poll showed the majority of American adults feel the quality of healthcare in the US is unfavorable. [1] The US has the greatest healthcare expense per person in the world at $12,914 per person. That’s more than $5,000 per person higher than the next most expensive country (Germany, $7,383 per person), and more than double the average expense per person among wealthy nations. The US spends $4.3 trillion per year on medical care (mostly on “rescue care” interventions). These expenses do not count the cost of medical buildings, medical equipment, and medical research. [2,3] The US also leads the world in per capita spending for retail prescription drugs, totaling $378 billion per year. [4] In spite of all of this spending, the 2022 Commonwealth Fund report reveals that among wealthy nations, the US has the highest infant mortality, maternal mortality related to childbirth, deaths from drug overdoses, obesity prevalence, and prevalence of people with multiple chronic conditions, and the lowest life expectancy at birth. [5] The public, and many medical providers, are seeking a better way to pursue health.
The answer to better health care can include adequate nutritional supplements. Although supplements of essential nutrients are effective and widely used, they represent a tiny fraction of health care expenditures. Surveys indicate that 77 – 86% of Americans take at least one of the over 29,000 dietary supplements on the market. Vitamin D, magnesium, omega-3, Coenzyme Q10, and multivitamin supplements are the most commonly purchased dietary supplements. Approximately one third of Americans take vitamin C supplements. People with increased age, wealth, and education are more likely to use dietary supplements. Americans spend $30 billion per year on dietary supplements. Yet this expenditure is actually less than 1% (0.7%) of the money spent annually on “healthcare,” and less than 10% (7.9%) of the money spent on retail prescription drugs). [6] Approximately 40,000 of the 209,000 family practice physicians in the US have invested in continuing education related to integrative medicine. [7]
Orthomolecular Medicine in Action
Here are a few snapshots from around the world showing glimpses of other approaches to care for some disease conditions. This list is not at all exhaustive, and is not meant to imply that perfect solutions have been found for these ailments. Hopefully they will stimulate discussion and provide encouragement that nutritional therapy supporting the body’s natural defenses and metabolism can help produce safe, effective, and less expensive outcomes. Together, we can keep finding better ways to care for one another.
A mother and her infant son sought treatment at a hospital for an upper respiratory infection while traveling in Astana, Kazakhstan. Covid-19 tests were negative. The mother was given IV vitamin C and ultraviolet light (UVB) treatment to stimulate vitamin D production. Both mother and child were prescribed vitamin C, vitamin D, and a decongestant. [Personal communication]
A 60-year diabetic man with severe Covid-19 and rapidly deteriorating disease recovered quickly after receiving antioxidant therapies including high dose vitamin C, vitamin D3 and glutathione. http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v18n03.shtml
An elderly woman in China was in the ICU diagnosed with acute liver failure when her American daughter received notice from the hospital of her life-threatening condition. The patient received high dose IV vitamin C and liposomal vitamin C and recovered within days. [Practice, RZ Cheng]
In December 2022, when China suddenly relaxed its lockdown policy, a 5-year old boy with a high temperature (39.5C/103F) was diagnosed with Covid-19, but was unable to be admitted to a hospital due to a shortage of hospital beds. The boy received high dose antioxidant therapy including vitamin C, and recovered the next morning. [Practice, RZ Cheng]
An 86-year man with metastatic prostate cancer lived 6 more years on a ketogenic diet and nutritional supplementation including high dose IV Vit C. When he eventually passed away, there was no sign of his cancer. [Practice, RZ Cheng]
A young Norwegian man who had chest lymphoma found that the lymphoma disappeared after adopting a restrictive-ketogenic diet and nutritional supplementation including high dose vitamin C. http://www.drwlc.com/blog/2022/11/01/2351
A 62 year man with symptomatic CTA-confirmed atherosclerotic coronary artery stenosis saw his stenosis completely resolve after 20 months on a low carbohydrate diet and nutritional therapy including high dose vitamin C. [Practice, RZ Cheng]
A 63 year man with carotid artery stenosis, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis (with elevated autoantibodies) , cholecystitis changes on ultrasound, as well as multiple other health problems received an integrative protocol including low carbohydrate/ketogenic diet, detox and nutritional therapy including high dose vitamin C, saw carotid artery stenosis disappear (CT confirmed) in 8 months. His thyroid autoantibodies became normal and inflammatory changes in his gallbladder went away as well. [Practice, RZ Cheng]
Many patients with autoimmune diseases have seen their disease improve or reverse, including Hashimoto cases, psoriasis [8], vitiligo, eczema, idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP), and inflammatory bowel diseases. http://www.drwlc.com/blog/2022/05/20/reversing-hashimotos-thyroiditis-with-orthomolecular-medicine
The Baylor College of Medicine reported a 44 year old woman with a life-threatening case of Thrombotic Thrombocytopenic Purpura (TTP), with ADAMTS-13 function < 10% of normal and ADAMTS-13 inhibitors present, was refractory to standard treatments and remained in a coma after 12 days of intensive care treatment. She became fully awake and responsive 18 hours after receiving 150 mg/Kg IV N-Acetyl Cysteine (NAC), a precursor to glutathione, on day 13 of her hospitalization. IV NAC was continued for 10 days along with UNUSED_going standard treatment, and she was discharged in good condition 31 days after admission. The ADAMTS-13 levels improved to 65% on day 28, and her platelet count and hemoglobin level normalized 7 days after discharge from the hospital (day 38 of treatment). [9]
During the Ebola epidemic in Liberia in 2014, Dr. Jerry Brown and his team of “Ebola Fighters” at the ELWA Hospital were recognized as Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year”. Dr. Brown was the last physician remaining in the area, and used an approach centered around isolation, hydration, multivitamins, and selenium supplements to keep his team healthy and to care for as many people as possible. More recently, as medical director for the 14th Military Hospital in Liberia, he again emphasized multivitamins and selenium supplements to help with Covid-19 outbreaks in the area. [10]
Dr. Marik, founder of the HAT (hydrocortisone, ascobic acid, and thiamine) treatment protocol for sepsis, and MATH+ (methylprednisolone, ascorbic acid, thiamine, heparin) treatment protocol for acute COVID-19, and 2022 recipient of a unanimous commendation from the Virginia House of Commons in 2022 for “his courageous treatment of critically ill COVID-19 patients and his philanthropic efforts to share his effective treatment protocols with physicians around the world.” discusses his vision for healthcare in an interview with Dr. Mercola: [11] https://covid19criticalcare.com/a-new-vision-for-health-care
https://www.bitchute.com/video/Ygqz05H6otqj
Conclusion
In the cases reported above, serious illness was successfully treated and/or reversed using high doses of nutritional supplements. The rationale for this life-saving treatment is that serious illness depletes the body’s essential nutrients (such as vitamins and minerals). When essential nutrients are depleted, the body organs that rely on those nutrients cannot function and will often proceed to dysfunction and death. But with adequate levels of vitamins and minerals, the body shows its amazing power for recuperation. In cases where symptoms are mild and not life-threatening, higher levels of vitamins and minerals than the minimum (e.g. MDR) are helpful for optimum health.
Healthcare in the USA could be greatly improved with the inclusion of nutritional supplements in adequate individualized doses and duration into the “standard care” given by medical professionals.
“Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.” ― Thomas Jefferson
Education and free speech, not censorship, are the antidotes to misinformation.
Real learning and progress, including medical progress, depends on keeping an open mind, following the evidence, and sharing positive outcomes. The practice of preventing and treating disease by providing the body with optimal amounts of substances which are natural to the body – Orthomolecular Medicine – continues to provide a solid foundation for wellness and healing around the globe. [12]
References
1. McPhillips D (2023) New poll shows jump in adults who rate the quality of US health care as ‘poor’. CNN https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/19/health/us-health-care-poll-gallup/index.html
2. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, National Health Expenditure data fact sheet. (2021) https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/statistics-trends-and-reports/nationalhealthexpenddata/nhe-fact-sheet
3. McGouth M, Telesford I, Rakshit S, et al. (2023) “How does health spending in the U.S. compare to other countries? ” Health System Tracker. Peterson Center on Healthcare and KFF. https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries
4. Prescription drug expenditure in the United States from 1960 to 2021. Statista, accessed 4/10/2023. https://www.statista.com/statistics/184914/prescription-drug-expenditures-in-the-us-since-1960
5. U.S. Health Care from a Global Perspective, 2022: Accelerating Spending, Worsening Outcomes. https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2023/jan/us-health-care-global-perspective-2022
6. Zippia. (2023) 25 Fascinating Supplements Industry Statistics (2023) Data + Trends. Zippia.com. https://www.zippia.com/advice/supplements-industry-statistics
7. Ventola CL (2010) Current Issues Regarding Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) in the United States Part 1: The Widespread Use of CAM and the Need for Better-Informed Health Care Professionals to Provide Patient Counseling. P T. 35:461-468. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20844696
8. McCullough PJ, McCullough WP, Lehrer D, et al. (2021) Oral and Topical Vitamin D, Sunshine, and UVB Phototherapy Safely Control Psoriasis in Patients with Normal Pretreatment Serum 25-Hydroxyvitamin D Concentrations: A Literature Review and Discussion of Health Implications. Nutrients 13:1511. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33947070
9. Tokpah WN (2020) Liberia: COVID-19 Cases Decline, Dr. Jerry Brown Discloses As Insurance Company of Africa Donates Supplement to Battle the Virus. Front Page Africa. https://frontpageafricaonline.com/news/liberia-covid-19-cases-decline-dr-jerry-brown-discloses-as-insurance-company-of-africa-donates-supplement-to-battle-the-virus
10. Li GW, Rombally S, Kamboj J, et al. (2014) Treatment of refractory thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura with N-acetylcysteine: a case report. Transfusion 54:1221-1224. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24117464
11. Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) https://covid19criticalcare.com/experts/paul-e-marik
12. Orthomolecular.org Therapeutic Nutrition Based Upon Biochemical Individuality. Accessed 4/10/2023. http://orthomolecular.org/library/definition/index.shtml
Nutritional Medicine is Orthomolecular Medicine
Orthomolecular medicine uses safe, effective nutritional therapy to fight illness. For more information: http://www.orthomolecular.org
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Tumor metabolism is slower than suspected, new study finds
Reproduced from original article:
https://www.naturalhealth365.com/tumor-metabolism-is-slower-than-suspected-new-study-finds.html
by: February 20, 2023
(NaturalHealth365) For years, tumor growth in humans has been the subject of extensive research. One particular area of interest is the role of the metabolic system. Initially, it was assumed that tumors required a significant amount of energy during their growth, which could leave insufficient metabolic resources for essential organs.
According to a recent study, the belief that tumors consume a lot of energy during their growth and compete with vital organs for metabolic resources is inaccurate. The study found that the rate at which tumors convert nutrients into cellular energy is slow. One possible explanation for this sluggishness is that the tumor preserves its energy to promote growth and metastasis.
This finding challenges the effectiveness of current treatments that rely on depriving tumors of nutrients. It upends the conventional approach of “starving the tumor” and raises questions about the viability of such treatment plans.
The role of glucose in tumor growth and metastasis
The researchers discovered that while tumors have a slow rate of converting nutrients into cellular energy, they do use glucose more than other tissues. This finding suggests that dietary interventions that restrict glucose circulation may have some therapeutic potential, such as the ketogenic diet.
However, treatment strategies that solely focus on depriving tumors of nutrients may not be effective since tumors conserve their energy to promote growth and metastasis. The study found that solid tumors in colon, pancreatic, and lung cancer have a slow energy consumption rate. In contrast, metastatic cancer uses energy at a similar rate to healthy tissue. These results indicate that a more nuanced approach to cancer treatment is needed to address the metabolic demands of tumors.
Natural approaches to preventing cancer
Cancer prevention is crucial for maintaining good health, and it should be a regular part of everyone’s lifestyle. In addition to reducing the risk of cancer, adopting cancer prevention measures can also lead to better overall health. Here are some natural ways that experts recommend for preventing cancer.
- Avoid processed sugar, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, and products that contain them
- Eat a healthy diet, based on a low carbohydrate intake
- Choose organic foods, as much as possible
- Choose foods with cancer-protective properties
- Exercise, on a regular basis
- Maintain a healthy weight
- Don’t use tobacco
- Learn to manage stress
- Get regular sunlight exposure, but be reasonable
- Exclude highly processed foods from your diet (this includes fast food)
- Swap out toxic household cleaning products for safer, non-toxic alternatives
- Avoid products containing PFAS
It can sometimes feel like we live in a world where nearly everything has the potential to harm our health. From pollution to processed foods and sedentary lifestyles, there are numerous factors that can increase the risk of developing chronic diseases, including cancer.
However, by making some lifestyle changes, you can take control of your health and reduce your risk of developing cancer.
You are not powerless against cancer. There are things you can do, including the things listed here, that can help decrease your risk of developing cancer and improve your odds of fighting it more effectively.
Find out how to avoid the threat of cancer, own the Stop Cancer Docu-Class program created by Jonathan Landsman.
Sources for this article include:
How a Vegetarian Eating Plan Could Affect a Pregnancy
Reproduced from original article:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/02/13/vegetarian-eating-plan-pregnancy.aspx
The original Mercola article may not remain on the original site, but I will endeavor to keep it on this site as long as I deem it to be appropriate.
Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola Fact Checked February 13, 2023
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- Heart & Soil, a company founded by Dr. Paul Saladino to help people return to the way our ancestors ate, produced a 20-minute video discussing the health benefits of eating an animal-based diet when women are pregnant or want to become pregnant
- Returning to the nutritional roots of eating fewer carbohydrates, no processed foods and an animal-based diet can help mitigate the effects of environmental toxins, such as ubiquitous plasticizers, are the core components of Heart & Soil
- Data show that infertility rates have been rising for decades in what Shanna Swan, Ph.D., calls “the 1% effect,” describing declining sperm count, testosterone and fertility and rising testicular cancer and miscarriage — all at about 1% per year
- It is crucial to note that fake meat is not meat but ultraprocessed food with genetically engineered components; the industry claims it has a smaller carbon footprint than CAFO meat, but exchanging one broken system for another is not the answer
- Ultraprocessed foods are high in toxic chemicals, lack nutrition and are high in carbohydrates, all of which negatively impact pregnancy outcomes. They also contain linoleic acid that damages insulin sensitivity and produces heart disease, dementia and obesity
In this 20-minute video, Dr. Paul Saladino, founder of Heart & Soil, a company that helps people return to the way our ancestors ate,1 discusses the relationship between a decline in fertility and the food that most men and women are eating today. The diet is often referred to as the standard American diet (SAD), which is composed of highly processed, high-carbohydrate foods.
One of the biggest health struggles in the U.S. is weight. According to the CDC,2 73.6% of adults over 20 are overweight, including obesity, even though most people are seeking to be slim and within a healthy weight range.
I have long written about the benefits of eating a cyclical ketogenic diet that focuses on a minimal carbohydrate intake, which can help attain, and maintain, a healthy weight. In addition to lowering the risk of being overweight and obese, a ketogenic diet also reduces chronic inflammation and produces far fewer reactive oxygen species.
Eliminating sugar and carbohydrates also helps reduce your risk of chronic inflammation that is at the heart of many chronic diseases, which “collectively represent the leading causes of disability and mortality worldwide.”3
While I recommend that carbohydrates comprise no more than 5% carbohydrates, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,4 the average carbohydrate intake for men is 45.9% of their diet; the average carbohydrate intake for women is 47.4% of their diet.
In her book “The Obesity Epidemic: What Caused It? How Can We Stop It?” Zoe Harcombe notes the fundamental error made in diet plans is misunderstanding the law of thermodynamics. She believes there’s an intricate biochemical dynamic that’s unaccounted for when you only count calories in and calories out.
Thermodynamics refers to the movement of energy. For example, the energy used in making protein available to the body is from 25% to 30%. However, that same effect in carbohydrates is from 6% to 8%. While obesity is a significant health problem, it’s not the only health challenge triggered by eating a diet high in carbohydrates.
Side-by-Side Comparison Is Impressive
In the video above, Saladino and midwife Lindsey Meehleis discuss the lack of nutrients in the SAD and how it affects fertility and pregnancy outcomes. Saladino and Meehleis propose, and have seen, that moving back to a nutrient-dense animal-based diet can help mitigate exposure to glyphosates and endocrine- and fertility-disrupting microplastics in the environment.
In the video, one mother of two, who was pregnant with her third child during filming, recounts her time as a vegetarian for seven years. She describes herself as “close-minded” after reading the headlines, but not really investigating the information herself.
It wasn’t until she met her husband, and he began asking questions about her low energy and chronic napping, that she began to think maybe a vegetarian diet high in grains and meat alternatives was not providing her with the right nutrition. Another mother tells her story of being in her early 30s and learning that 40% of her eggs may not be viable because of her age.
Yet, after moving to an animal-based diet, she easily became pregnant and felt incredibly healthy throughout the pregnancy. Saladino, the midwife and the mothers who were interviewed all stressed the need to include organ meat in the diet, sharing that they are considered delicacies around the world because they are “some of the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet.”
Organ meats contain critical nutrients like choline, selenium, magnesium, vitamin A, zinc and iron. And, different from lab-produced nutritional supplements, they are more bioavailable. Meehleis recounts her interactions with a 30-week pregnant woman who she put on a supplement of heart and liver. Just one week later, the woman texted Meehleis that it was the best she felt through the whole pregnancy after only one week of adding “Nature’s best multivitamin.”
Saladino’s concern is that prenatal vitamins are not as bioavailable as organ meats and “cause more harm than good because they give people a false sense of security. They have this idea that I don’t have to think about what I’m eating,” he says. “I can continue eating junk food or not eating enough animal foods.”
Meehleis explains the importance of the placenta as an organ that supplies the baby with nutrients throughout growth and development. “This is what nourishes the baby. This is the baby’s home, and we have to look at what we’re putting into our bodies today.” It is at this point in the video that she is viewing two placentas side by side.
One is that of a mother who ate a purely vegetarian diet throughout the pregnancy and the other ate a nutrient-dense animal-based diet. The placenta of the mother eating a vegetarian diet is noticeably lighter and more anemic in color and not as dense or healthy looking.
“I cannot believe the difference in the quality of the placenta and not just the quality of the placenta, but in turn the nutrition of what the baby was growing in and what the baby received throughout the whole pregnancy.” She goes on to explain the differences that she can feel in the different organs.
“It’s just obvious there is such a huge substantial difference in the quality and consistency of these placentas.” She pushes several areas of the placenta, saying, “This is called calcification. If you feel it, it’s hard and there’s a little bit of sand consistency. This is throughout the entire placenta and it’s not what we would want to see in pregnancy.”
Infertility Rates Are Rising
In the video, Saladino and Meehleis reference the impact that endocrine-disrupting microplastics and phthalates have on fertility. Researchers have noted the reduction in fertility in the last decades and understand the implications this has for the future of humanity. In 1992, Shanna Swan, Ph.D., from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, first heard about the potential decline in fertility.
She is a reproductive epidemiologist and professor of environmental medicine and public health. She read a study5 showing evidence of declining quality in semen from the past 50 years and thought it sounded extreme. She spent six months evaluating the 61 studies that were included in the review and thus began her decades-long journey into unraveling this disturbing trend.
Through years of careful research, she found the smoking gun behind declining fertility is a class of chemicals called phthalates, which are so ubiquitous that the CDC has stated “phthalate exposure is widespread in the U.S. population.”6 An estimated 8.4 million metric tons of plasticizers, including phthalates, are used worldwide each year.7
Swan’s book “Count Down” is based on a 2017 study8 she co-wrote, which found sperm counts dropped by 59.3% from 1973 to 2011. The most significant declines were found in men from North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, where many had sperm concentrations below 40 million per milliliter, which is considered the cutoff point at which a man will have trouble fertilizing an egg.
Men in these countries had a 52.4% decline in sperm concentration and a 59.3% decline in total sperm count, which is the sperm concentration multiplied by the total volume of an ejaculate. Swan dubs the apparent synergy between fertility and reproductive health “the 1% effect” as data show sperm count, testosterone and fertility are dropping, while testicular cancer and miscarriage are rising — all at about 1% per year.9
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Fake Meat Is Not Meat
In the video, Meehleis and Saladino talk about their patients whose struggle with fertility was reversed after moving away from processed foods and concentrating on an animal-based diet. However, it’s important to note that no matter how much the processed meat industry tries to make its products look and feel like real meat, fake meat is not meat. Far from it.
In fact, fake meat perfectly fits the definition of ultraprocessed foods, which typically have five or more ingredients, many of which are not commonly used in home kitchens.10 Fake meat products also include fake blood processed from genetically engineered yeast to mimic the taste and texture of real beef.11
While the FDA has classified the Impossible Burger as generally recognized as safe (GRAS) using data provided by the University of Nebraska and the University of Wisconsin,12 other experts are not convinced.
According to the Center for Food Safety,13 94% of the soybean crops grown in the U.S. are genetically altered. There is not enough data14 to determine human safety when consuming chemical compounds, as these compounds are produced from genetically altered yeast harvested from genetically altered soybeans.
Ultraprocessed foods have contributed to obesity,15 rising rates of cardiovascular disease and an increased risk of all-cause mortality.16 The industry has used strategies to position this product as healthier and better for the environment, which has led many to believe the food they’re eating is protecting their local air and water supply. One of the claims is that the products are sustainable and leave a smaller carbon footprint than that of traditional beef production.
When this is compared to CAFO facilities, where animals are treated inhumanely, antibiotic use contributes to widespread antibiotic resistance and the waste products damage air and water supplies, they may rank a little better. However, as has been proven in the past, moving from one broken system to another is not the answer.
To assess and compare the environmental impact of typical beef production against fake meat, Impossible Burger commissioned a study from Quantis17 and Beyond Meat commissioned one from the University of Michigan.18 Both companies found similar results. The executive summary published on Impossible Foods19 showed their product reduced environmental impact between 87% and 96% in the categories studied.
White Oaks Pasture in Bluffton, Georgia, responded, and commissioned and published the same analysis by Quantis,20 which showed the ranch had a net total emission in the negative numbers as compared to CAFO meat. Emissions at White Oaks were also much lower than the average production of soybeans, which is the base for plant-based burgers and fake blood.
Additionally, emissions by White Oaks Pastures included a large negative soil carbon sequestration, which I’ve explained in many articles is essential to protect against air pollution and climate change. In other words, regenerative farming techniques are healthier for the environment, produce healthy products for human consumption and feed the soil so the land continues to produce year after year.
In my 2021 interview [Bitchute, March 10, 2021] with Saladino, we discussed the nose-to-tail animal-based diet of the African Hadza tribe, who are among the best still-living representations of the way early humans lived. Their diet is primarily meat and includes organ meats and connective tissue, tubers, berries and fruit and honey from the baobab tree. Chronic disease is rare, and many remain vital well into old age.
How Linoleic Acid Damages Your Health
The problems with ultraprocessed foods during pregnancy don’t end with toxic chemicals, lack of nutrition and high carbohydrates. Most processed foods are also high in omega-6 fatty acids, namely linoleic acid. Every man, woman, child and baby experiences the damaging effects of linoleic acid.
Processed seed oils, also referred to as vegetable oils, are damaging to your immune system, which in turn plays an important role in fetal and maternal protection during pregnancy. Researchers21 have discovered there is a unique three-way communication between the immune system, pregnancy hormones and the gut microbiota that play a role in adverse pregnancy outcomes.
In 2022, an immunologist with CNBC News named sugar “the worst food ingredient for your immune system,”22 in large part because it contributes to insulin resistance and obesity, which increases inflammation and causes damage to blood vessels. But what most health “experts” simply do not understand is that seed oils are even worse than sugar.
Not only are most of the omega-6s you eat, including seed oils, damaged and oxidized through processing, but even if they are unheated and pristine when consumed in any but small amounts, your body degrades them into free radicals that damage virtually every tissue in your body.
Saladino explained in a podcast that linoleic acid “breaks the sensitivity for insulin at the level of your fat cells,”23 essentially making them more insulin sensitive — and, since your fat cells control the insulin sensitivity of the rest of your body by releasing free fatty acids, you end up with insulin resistance.
Insulin resistance and high blood glucose have a detrimental effect on a growing fetus.24 It increases the risk the baby is born early, has breathing issues, weighs too much or has low blood glucose. High blood glucose levels during early pregnancy can affect the development of the child’s heart, brain, lungs and kidneys.
In adults, seed oils are responsible for heart disease, age-related macular degeneration, diabetes, obesity and dementia.25 During an interview with Tucker Goodrich,26 who moved from IT risk management systems where he developed a program used by two of the largest hedge funds in the world to medical research, he explained that animals typically develop cancer when linoleic acid reaches 4% to 10% of their dietary intake.
Yet, most Americans consume approximately 8% of their calories from seed oils. This means we are well over the safety threshold developed in the lab. Data27 also indicates that COVID-19 mortality rates are heavily influenced by the amount of unsaturated fats eaten. Unsaturated fat intake is associated with increased mortality from COVID-19, while saturated fat intake found in an animal-based diet lowers your risk of death.
The authors noted that unsaturated fats “cause injury [and] organ failure resembling COVID-19.”28 All told, the data indicate that women who are pregnant or want to become pregnant have a better health experience when they eat an animal-based diet and steer clear of ultraprocessed foods.
- 1 Live Ancestral August 23, 2022
- 2 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Obesity and Overweight, top section
- 3 Natural Medicine, 2019;25(12)
- 4 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Diet/Nutrition
- 5 BMJ, 1992;305(6854)
- 6 CDC, Phthalates Factsheet
- 7 CNN, February 20, 2021
- 8 Human Reproduction Update, 2017;23(6)
- 9 Sustainable Pulse, February 26, 2021
- 10 Current Developments in Nutrition, 2019;3(2) Table 1
- 11 Food Safety News, September 10, 2019
- 12 National Compass, November 23, 2017
- 13 Center for Food Safety, About Genetically Engineered Foods
- 14 Consumer Reports, August 29, 2019 Subhead Impossible Burger, 55% DTP
- 15 BMJ, 2019;365
- 16 BMJ, New Evidence Links Ultra Processed Foods with a Range of Health Risks
- 17 Quantis, Comparative Environmental LCA of the Impossible Burger with Conventional Ground Beef Burger
- 18 University of Michigan, September 14, 2018
- 19 Impossible Foods, Environmental Life Cycle Analysis
- 20 Quantis, Carbon Footprint Evaluation of Regenerative Grazing at White Oak Pastures
- 21 Best Practices and Research Clinical Gastroenterology, 2020; 44(101671)
- 22 CNBC, January 15, 2022
- 23 YouTube, June 23, 2020, Min 1:44:10
- 24 National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, Pregnancy If You Have Diabetes, subhead 1
- 25 YouTube, August 26, 2021, Min 00:25
- 26 Bitchute, December 11, 2020
- 27, 28 Gastroenterology, 2020;159(3)
Case Study Reveals How Cognitive Decline Can Be Reversed
Reproduced from original article:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2022/11/20/recode-protocol.aspx
The original Mercola article may not remain on the original site, but I will endeavor to keep it on this site as long as I deem it to be appropriate.
Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola Fact Checked November 20, 2022
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- A case report of 100 patients diagnosed with cognitive decline using the ReCODE protocol showed both subjective and objective improvements in all participants
- The ReCODE protocol, which involves identifying the drivers of cognitive decline (such as pathogens, toxins and metabolic changes), then targeting those in a personalized program that includes dietary and lifestyle changes, allows your brain to create and maintain synapses again, thereby treating the root of the problem
- A hallmark of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s is that proteins are aggregated and are typically misfolded
- By inducing ketosis, improving insulin sensitivity and supporting the mitochondria, you can often regain the ability to refold or proteolyze misfolded proteins
- Electromagnetic field exposures, such as that from cellphones and Wi-Fi, may play an important role in Alzheimer’s, as it triggers high amounts of oxidative stress and damage to proteins and DNA
Alzheimer’s disease, which is the most common form of dementia, eventually leads to the inability to carry out even the most basic of bodily functions, such as swallowing or walking. It is ultimately fatal, as conventional treatment options are few and universally ineffective.
Like autism among children, Alzheimer’s among seniors has reached epidemic proportions, with no slowdown in sight. On the contrary, evidence suggests the trend is worsening. In 2022, Alzheimer’s affects more than 6 million Americans,1 and 1 in 3 seniors dies with dementia or other demention. By 2050, Alzheimer’s diagnoses are projected to reach 13.8 million.2,3
While the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists the disease as the seventh leading cause of death in the U.S.,4,5 statistics published in the journal Neurology in 2014 revealed Alzheimer’s is vastly underreported on death certificates. In reality, the disease likely killed 503,400 American seniors in 2010,6 making it the third leading cause of death, right behind heart disease and cancer.7
The good news is that contrary to conventional claims, there are ways to prevent and even treat this tragic disease — not by drugs, but by diet and other lifestyle changes.
Dr. Dale Bredesen, professor of molecular and medical pharmacology at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine, and author of “The End of Alzheimer’s: The First Program to Prevent and Reverse Cognitive Decline,” has identified a number of molecular mechanisms at work in Alzheimer’s, and created a novel program called ReCODE to treat and reverse it.8
100-Patient Case Report Sheds Light on Treatment Options
One of Bredesen’s publications is a case report9,10 of 100 patients using the ReCODE protocol. He had previously published three case reports, each involving just 10 patients. This fourth case report contains 100 patients treated at 15 different clinics across the U.S., all of which have documented pre- and post-cognitive testing.
Not only did all show improvement in symptoms, some of them also showed improvement in their quantitative electroencephalographs (EEGs). Others who underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with volumetrics also showed objective improvement.
“By all the criteria, these people showed improvement, subjective and objective,” Bredesen says. This is no small thing, as there is no conventional treatment that can reverse Alzheimer’s. There have been many drug trials to date, but all have failed to reverse the disease. As noted by Bredesen:
“There are a couple of medications, Aricept, Namenda … but these have a very, very modest impact. The most important thing is their improvement is not sustained. They don’t change the outcome of the disease. You get a little bump in improvement, then you go right back to declining.
The most important part of the [ReCODE] protocol … is that the improvement is sustained. You’re actually going after the root cause of what is causing the cognitive decline. That’s a big difference.”
Alzheimer’s Is a Protective Response to Inflammation
If one were to summarize Bredesen’s approach in one sentence, it would be “to improve the ratio between synaptoblastic and synaptoclastic activity, which is the brain’s ability to create new synapses versus destroying them.” In other words, the treatment allows your brain to create and maintain synapses again. Bredesen explains:
“The molecular biology of this disease shows that what we call Alzheimer’s disease is actually a protective response. It’s essentially a scorched-earth retreat.
You’re pulling back and saying, ‘We’re not going to let this insult kill us, so we’re going to scorch the earth so it (whether it’s bacteria or something else) cannot take advantage … of what’s there.’ You’re literally downsizing [your synapses]. As long as those insults are going on, you will be downsized.”
Beta-amyloid is a protein that is highly correlated with Alzheimer’s. However, all attempts at removing it have failed to improve the condition. Clearly, beta-amyloid in and of itself is not the primary cause, so simply getting rid of it is not the answer.
In Bredesen’s paper, he discusses the role of beta-amyloid as an antimicrobial peptide (AMP). Importantly, AMPs are critically important for host immunity. They target organisms such as bacteria, mycobacteria, viruses, fungi and protozoa. He explains:
“Here is the trick. It turns out amyloid beta is really part of the innate immune system. Its antimicrobial effect was first discovered and published by professor Robert Moir and professor Rudy Tanzi at Harvard.
This thing actually has, again, a protective response. Not only is it an AMP, but it also binds some toxins. For example, mercury, other divalent metals like iron and things like that. [Amyloid beta] has multiple effects. It is part of your response to insult.
When you take that into account, you realize it’s fine to remove amyloid, but please don’t do it before you remove all the insults. We’ve seen numerous people now who have had the amyloid reduced and gotten worse because the ongoing insults are still there.”
In 2019, the drug company Biogen halted its Phase II clinical trial for aducanumab, a drug designed to remove beta-amyloid, and this is the typical story for these kinds of drugs. And then a major trial of yet another approach to amyloid removal, the BACE inhibitor CNP520, was halted because the drug was associated with increased cognitive decline and brain atrophy.11
The Protein Refolding Process Is Impaired in Alzheimer’s
About one-third of the proteins your body makes on any given day are misfolded. Thankfully, your body has a mechanism by which those misfolded proteins are refolded. Heat-shock proteins play a central role in this process, and if the misfolding is too severe, the heat-shock proteins help remove them altogether.
In fact, heat-shock proteins are a corollary of autophagy, the process by which your body cleans out damaged organelles. This relates to Alzheimer’s, because the refolding process is one of several factors that need to work in order for your brain to function. As noted by Bredesen:
“In all of these different neurodegenerative diseases, whether you’re talking about Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, Lou Gehrig’s disease, Parkinson’s disease or Lewy body, they all feature proteins that are aggregated and that are typically misfolded. They are not degraded appropriately.
You lose not only the ability to fold but the ability to degrade these proteins. That is a critical piece. In fact, just recently, an article came out on a common neurodegenerative condition, newly described, which is called LATE, which is limbic-predominant, age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy.
In other words, this is a little bit like Alzheimer’s … [LATE] features TDP-43, which is a protein that is involved in numerous things, including protein folding … We lose that [protein-folding] ability as we start to downsize [synapses], as you don’t have an appropriate energy, you don’t have the appropriate trophic support.
You don’t have the appropriate hormonal and nutritional support … When we target ketosis, when we target insulin sensitivity, when we target mitochondrial support, that typically allows you to generate the appropriate ability to refold misfolded proteins …
You can induce the heat-shock response … by doing this combination of sauna and then [going] into the cold and then back to the sauna and then back to the cold …
You are recurrently activating this critical response [by doing that]. There’s no question it is going to be important, especially in ALS, but likely in all of the neurodegenerative conditions.”
The Link Between Protein Folding and Cell Death
As noted by Bredesen, there are three kinds of autophagy: macro-autophagy, micro-autophagy and chaperone-mediated autophagy. Each offers a slightly different way to repair, remove or recycle damaged organelles within the cell.
Specific proteins, for example, can be targeted for chaperone-mediated autophagy. Bredesen recounts findings of research he did to ascertain the linkage between protein folding and programmed cell death (apoptosis, where the entire cell is killed off and removed):
“If you fail to reform these [misfolded proteins], you literally activate an entire system that initially stops producing more protein. It’s basically saying, ‘We’re not keeping up with this. We’re going to shut this down.’ It attempts to refold. Then it attempts to destroy the proteins if it can’t refold them.
Then ultimately, if it cannot … keep up … it literally activates programmed cell death through specific caspases … This is something where you want to intervene upstream; understand why this is happening. And then if you’re unable to keep up with this, now, at least increase your heat-shock proteins so that you can refold. In this case, you prevent the induction of programmed cell death.”
Unfortunately, a vast majority of people do not have well-functioning autophagy, for the simple reason that they’re insulin-resistant. If you’re insulin-resistant, you cannot increase your adenosine 5′ monophosphate-activated protein kinase (AMPK) level, which prevents the inhibition of mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), and mTOR inhibition is one of the primary drivers of autophagy.
The Case for Cyclical Fasting
While autophagy is clearly of critical importance, you don’t want to be in continuous autophagy. You also need to cycle through the rebuilding phase. One of the ways in which you can control this is through cyclical fasting. Bredesen typically recommends an intermittent fasting approach.
“You want to use appropriate fasting and an appropriate diet to activate this autophagy,” Bredesen says. “We recommend … 12 to 14 hours [of fasting] if you are apolipoprotein E4-negative (ApoE4-negative) … If you are ApoE4-positive, you’d want to go longer — 14 to 16 hours. There’s nothing wrong with doing a longer fast …
The reason we suggest longer for the ApoE4-positives [is because] if you are ApoE4-positive, you are better at absorbing fat. It tends to take longer to enter autophagy …
Typically, we recommend it about once a week. But again, a longer fast once a month is a good idea. It depends a lot on your body mass index (BMI). What we found is people who have higher BMIs respond better to this fasting early on. They’re able to generate the ketones.
If you lose both the carbohydrates and the ketones, you end up [feeling] completely out of energy … We are very careful when people are down below 20 on their BMI, especially the ones 18 or below. We want to be very careful to make sure to cycle them [in and out of ketosis] once or twice a week …
These are the ones where, often, exogenous ketones can be very helpful early on … Measure your ketones. It’s simple to do. We want to get you into, ultimately, the 1.5 to 4.0 millimolar [range for] betahydroxybutyrate. That is the goal.”
Test Your Ketones
So, to recap, while dementia patients with excess weight tend to respond favorably to cyclical fasting, at least initially, underweight patients may experience cognitive decline, as they’re simply too underweight to produce ketones in response to the fasting. For those who are underweight, Bredesen recommends using a ketone supplement such as medium-chain triglycerides (MCT) oil.
If that doesn’t bring you into the desired ketone level (1.5 to 4.0 mmol), or if it’s adversely affecting your low-density lipoprotein (LDL) particle number, he might recommend exogenous ketones — either ketone esters or salts. “We’d like to look at your LDL particle number and use that to titrate, to make sure that your LDL particle number is not too high,” he says.
To test your ketones, I recommend KetoCoachX.12 It’s one of the least expensive testing devices on the market right now. Another good one is KetoMojo. KetoCoach, however, is less expensive, the strips are individually packed and the device is about half as thick as KetoMojo’s, making it easier to travel with.
Energy Demands Are Not Met in Neurodegenerative Diseases
Nutritional ketosis, in which your body produces endogenous ketones (water-soluble fats), is important for all neurodegenerative diseases, but it’s not a complete cure-all. Bredesen explains:
“What we’ve come to realize from the research over the years is that neurodegenerative diseases, whether Alzheimer’s … macular degeneration … Lewy body, Parkinson’s or ALS, they all have one thing in common. They are related to specific subdomains of the nervous system.
Each of these has a unique requirement for nutrients, hormones, trophic factors, et cetera … In each case, there is a mismatch between the supply and the demand. For most of your life, you’re keeping up with that demand. With all of these diseases, you have a repeated or a chronic mismatch between the support and the requirement.
In Parkinson’s disease, it’s quite clear. You can create Parkinson’s disease simply by inhibiting mitochondrial Complex I. That specific subdomain of motor modulation, which is what Parkinson’s is all about, is the thing that is the most sensitive to reductions in mitochondrial Complex I support.
Therefore, when people have this, you need to bring the supply back in line with the demand. A critical way to do that is to supply the appropriate ketosis — the appropriate energy.
Now, if the person is continuing to be exposed to whatever chemicals are inhibiting Complex I — and it’s typically … mold-related biotoxins or organic toxins such as paraquat or glyphosate — as long as these are ongoing, you’re going to get very temporary relief.
The goal here is both to get rid of what is inhibiting Complex I and to flood the system, to help the system by giving appropriate support for the energetics … With Alzheimer’s, we’re really talking about a mismatch in trophic support. You’ve got this ongoing need as you’re making neuroplasticity.”
Why Late-Night Eating Is Ill Advised
Although I am not ApoE4-positive, I prefer fasting for 16 hours a day, essentially narrowing my eating window to just four to six hours. I also make sure to eat my last meal three to six hours before bedtime. One of the reasons for this advice is because avoiding late-night eating will increase your nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) levels, which are important for a variety of bodily functions.
Importantly, it will also reduce nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH), which is essentially the true cellular battery of your cell and has the reductive potential to recharge your antioxidants. The largest consumer of NADPH is the creation of fatty acids.
If you’re eating close to bedtime, then you’re not going to be able to use the NADPH to burn those calories as energy. Instead, they must be stored some way. To store them, you have to create fat, so you’re basically radically lowering your NADPH levels when you eat late at night because they are being consumed to store your extra calories by creating fat.
Bredesen’s protocol includes this strategy as well. He calls his approach “KetoFlex 12/3,” because it generates mild ketosis and is flexible diet-wise. It can be done whether you’re a vegetarian or not. The 12/3 stands for a 12-hour minimum fast each day, and eating the last meal three hours before bedtime.
Certain supplements, including berberine, resveratrol, curcumin, quercetin and fisetin also boost autophagy, and can be used in addition to the nutritional timing. Bredesen explains:
“Sirtuin-1 (SIRT1) was identified as a critical molecule, both for longevity and has been studied extensively for its effects on longevity, but also for its effects on Alzheimer’s disease …
ApoE4 actually enters the nucleus and downregulates the production of this critical molecule, so you can see one of its many effects on Alzheimer’s disease. Well, when SIRT1 is made, it is actually made in an autoinhibitory fashion. It’s just like having a gun in a holster. It’s not active … NAD activates the SIRT1.
So does resveratrol. This is why people take resveratrol [or] nicotinamide riboside. These are both activating this program, which is moving you from … more of a pro-inflammatory approach to a longevity approach — a change in your metabolic pattern. That includes activating things like autophagy and also having an anti-Alzheimer’s and a pro-longevity effect …
[Q]uercetin also has an interesting impact on senescent cells … I think that that’s going to turn out to be an important way to impact a number of age-related conditions, including neurodegeneration.”
The drawback, and the reason you cannot rely on supplements alone, is that the bioabsorption of these polyphenols, like quercetin for example, is quite low. Oftentimes, you cannot absorb enough to get the full benefits.
Limit Electromagnetic Field Exposures
There’s also convincing evidence showing electromagnetic field exposures (EMFs) such as that from cellphones and Wi-Fi play an important role. Bredesen agrees, and recommends his patients limit such exposures. In summary, EMFs activate your voltage-gated calcium channels, allowing the release of excess nitric oxide and superoxide in the cell, resulting in the creation of peroxynitrite.
Peroxynitrite causes similar damage to your DNA as ionizing radiation. It also damages your stem cells, mitochondria, proteins and cell membranes. Poly-ADP ribose polymerase helps repair DNA damage by extracting an adenosine diphosphate (ADP) molecule from NAD. Approximately 100 to 150 NAD are required to repair a single DNA break.
While this process works quite well, problems arise when continuous DNA damage requiring continuous PARP activation occurs, as this ends up decimating your NAD+ level. Bredesen adds:
“This is a critical area. The big problem we’ve had with this so far is that we can measure your NF-κB activation; we can measure your status of hormones, nutrients, magnesium, on and on and on. Typically, with our approach, we measure 150 different variables.
There is no simple way to measure the effect of EMF on a given person’s nervous system. I look forward to the day when we can do a test and say, ‘Aha. This person has 27.2 on their effects on their voltage-gated calcium channels because of EMFs.’ Because then we’ll really be able to alter that.
For now, the best we can say is — just as we go after biotoxins and chemotoxins — [EMF] is a physical toxin. The best we can say is, ‘Minimize that to the extent you can.’ You can certainly measure the exposure. We just don’t have a good way yet to measure its effect on your brain.”
More Information
There’s no decline in sight for Alzheimer’s, at least in the foreseeable future, so it would behoove most people to just assume you’re headed for it and take action now, regardless of your age, to prevent it. When it comes to Alzheimer’s, prevention is surely far easier than trying to treat it once it has set in. As noted by Bredesen:
“This is all about prevention and early reversal. Those are the people where we see virtually 100% response. This is why I think there needs to be a global effort to decrease the burden of dementia. We’re just now starting a clinical trial. We’ve been trying to get institutional review board (IRB) approval for years …
It has finally been approved, so we’re starting a trial with Dr. Ann Hathaway, Dr. Deborah Gordon and Dr. Kat Toups, who are all seeing patients. We’re very excited to see what the trial will show with this approach. Because certainly, anecdotally, we’re hearing it all the time.
As you mentioned, we just published a paper a few months ago on 100 patients who showed documented improvement … I’m convinced we could, today, if everyone got an appropriate prevention, make this a very rare disease.”
Bredesen’s case report13 is open access, so you can download and read the full study. His book, “The End of Alzheimer’s: The First Program to Prevent and Reverse Cognitive Decline,” also provides the details, and would be a valuable reference in anyone’s health library.
You can also learn more about Bredesen and his work by following him on Facebook, Twitter or visit his website, drbredesen.com. Last but not least, read his book, “The First Survivors of Alzheimer’s: How Patients Recovered Life and Hope in Their Own Words,” which features first-person accounts from patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s who beat the odds and improved.
- 1, 5 Alzheimer’s Association. Facts and Figures
- 2 CNN June 8, 2015
- 3 Nature 2014: 20; 415-418
- 4, 7 CDC.gov Leading causes of death in the US
- 6 Neurology March 5, 2014; 82(12)
- 8 AHNP Precision Health ReCODE, The Bredesen Protocol
- 9, 13 Journal of Alzheimers Disease & Parkinsonism 2018; 8(5): 450
- 10 Rezilir Health LLC, 100 Case reports for the reversal of cognitive decline
- 11 Alzforum July 12, 2019
- 12 KetoCoachX.com
How to Raise or Lower Your Dementia Risk Through Diet
Reproduced from original article:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2022/11/12/alzheimers-meal-plan.aspx
The original Mercola article may not remain on the original site, but I will endeavor to keep it on this site as long as I deem it to be appropriate.
Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola Fact Checked November 12, 2022
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- A high-fat, moderate-protein, low net-carb ketogenic diet is crucial for preventing degeneration that can lead to Alzheimer’s. High-carb diets have been shown to increase your risk of dementia by 89% while high-fat diets lower it by 44%
- Other research highlights the importance of eating a diet rich in flavonols — antioxidants found in fruits, vegetables and tea. Those who got the highest amounts of flavonols had a 48% lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s than those getting the lowest amounts
- Drinking tea three times or more per week also lowers your risk of cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality. A 50-year-old habitual tea drinker would develop heart disease and/or have a stroke 1.41 years later than someone who drinks it less frequently, and live 1.26 years longer
- Diets high in trans fats, refined sugar, grains and processed vegetable oils, as well as insufficient cholesterol, raise your risk of dementia
- Diets high in trans fats can raise your risk of dementia by 52% to 74%. The biggest dietary culprits include pastries, margarine, candy, caramels, croissants, nondairy creamers, ice cream and rice cakes
According to statistics released in 2022, Alzheimer’s disease — the most common form of dementia for which there is no effective conventional treatment or cure — affects an estimated 6 million Americans,1 up from 5.4 million in 2016.
Progression of Alzheimer’s disease varies, but often begins with short-term memory lapses that later progress to speech problems and trouble with executive functions.
Your Diet Plays a Significant Role in Dementia
While it’s never too early to start, if your memory slips frequently enough to raise even an inkling of concern, it’s time to take action. A high-fat, moderate-protein, low net-carb ketogenic diet is crucial for protecting your brain health and preventing degeneration that can lead to Alzheimer’s.
One of the most striking studies2 showing the effects of a high-fat/low-carb versus high-carb diets on brain health revealed that high-carb diets increase your risk of dementia by 89%, while high-fat diets lower it by 44%.
According to the authors, “A dietary pattern with relatively high caloric intake from carbohydrates and low caloric intake from fat and proteins may increase the risk of mild cognitive impairment or dementia in elderly persons.” Other research3,4 highlights the importance of eating a diet rich in flavonols — antioxidants found in fruits, vegetables and tea. As reported by Reuters:5
“Researchers followed 921 people without dementia for about six years, starting when they 81 years old, on average. During the study, 220 people were diagnosed with probable Alzheimer’s disease.
People who had the most flavonols in their diet were about half as likely to develop Alzheimer’s than those who consumed the least … While 15% of people who ate the most flavonol developed Alzheimer’s disease, this rose to 54% among those who consumed the least.
This difference remained even after researchers accounted for other risk factors for Alzheimer’s like diabetes, a prior heart attack or stroke, or high blood pressure …”
Overall, people in the lowest quintile got about 5.3 milligrams of flavonols per day on average, while the highest intake group got about 15.3 mg per day. Those who got the highest amounts of flavonols had a 48% lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s than those getting the lowest amounts.
Some Flavonols Are More Potent Than Others
The researchers were particularly interested in whether specific flavonols might offer better protection than others. To determine this, they tallied participants’ intake of:
- Kaempferol
- Quercetin
- Myricetin
- Isorhamnetin
Kaempferol came out a clear winner in this regard. Those with the highest consumption of kaempferol had a 51% lower risk of dementia, while the highest intakes of isorhamnetin and myricetin were linked to a 38% lower risk. Quercetin, a powerful antiviral and immune booster, did not appear to have any impact on Alzheimer’s risk.
Tea Drinkers Live Longer
In related news, a January 2020 study6 in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology found habitual tea consumption (three times or more per week) helps lower your risk of cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality.
Overall, the findings suggest a 50-year-old who drinks tea at least three times a week would develop heart disease and/or have a stroke 1.41 years later than someone who drinks it less frequently. Overall, they’d also live 1.26 years longer than someone who didn’t regularly drink tea. As reported by Science Daily:7
“Compared with never or non-habitual tea drinkers, habitual tea consumers had a 20% lower risk of incident heart disease and stroke, 22% lower risk of fatal heart disease and stroke, and 15% decreased risk of all-cause death.”
How a Ketogenic Diet Protects Your Brain Function
Getting back to the ketogenic diet, it has the ability to lower your dementia risk in a number of ways. For starters, a cyclical ketogenic diet will improve your insulin sensitivity, which is an important factor in Alzheimer’s.8 The link between insulin sensitivity and Alzheimer’s is so strong, the disease is sometimes referred to as Type 3 diabetes.
Even mild elevation of blood sugar is associated with an elevated risk for dementia.9 Diabetes and heart disease10 are also known to elevate your risk, and both are rooted in insulin resistance. For optimal health, you’ll want to keep your insulin level below 3 mcU/ml (fasting).
The connection between high-sugar diets and Alzheimer’s was highlighted in a decadelong study published in the journal Diabetologia in January 2018,11 which showed that the higher your blood sugar, the faster your rate of cognitive decline.
Studies have also confirmed that the greater an individual’s insulin resistance, the less sugar they have in key parts of their brain, and these areas typically correspond to the areas affected by Alzheimer’s.12,13
A cyclical ketogenic diet will also trigger your body to produce ketones, an important source of energy (fuel) for your brain14 that have been shown to help prevent brain atrophy and alleviate symptoms of Alzheimer’s.15 Ketones may even restore and renew neuron and nerve function in your brain after damage has set in.
Last but not least, a cyclical ketogenic diet helps reduce free radical damage and lower inflammation in your brain. This too is largely the result of ketones, as they generate fewer reactive oxygen species and less free radical damage than carbohydrates.
A ketone called beta hydroxybutyrate is also a major epigenetic player, stimulating radical decreases in oxidative stress by decreasing NF-kB, thus reducing inflammation and NADPH levels along with beneficial changes in DNA expression that improve your detoxification and antioxidant production.
I explain the ins and outs of implementing this kind of diet, and its many health benefits, in my “KetoFast” book. In it, I also explain why cycling through stages of feast and famine, opposed to continuously remaining in nutritional ketosis, is so important.
(For clarity, a ketogenic diet tends to be very high in both healthy fats and vegetables. There is in fact no limit to the vegetable carbs you can eat. There’s also no restriction on tea.
The only area where prudence might be needed is when it comes to fruits, as some are very high in fructose. Fructose, even from fruit, needs to be restricted in the earlier stages until you’ve successfully transitioned into burning fat as your primary fuel. For guidance on what fats to eat more of, see the Fats section of my free nutrition plan.)
Trans Fats Raise Your Risk of Alzheimer’s
While diets high in healthy fats and antioxidants can go a long way toward warding off dementia, diets high in trans fats, refined sugar and grains do the opposite. Research16 published in the October 2019 issue of Neurology found a strong link between trans fat consumption and incidence of dementia and its various subtypes, including Alzheimer’s.
The study included 1,628 Japanese seniors aged 60 and older. None had dementia at the outset of the study, which went on for 10 years. Levels of elaidic acid — a biomarker for industrial trans fat — in the participants’ blood were measured using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry.
Based on those levels, the hazard ratios for all-cause dementia, Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia were calculated using Cox proportional hazards model. As reported by the authors:17
“Higher serum elaidic acid levels were significantly associated with greater risk of developing all-cause dementia and AD [Alzheimer’s disease] after adjustment for traditional risk factors.
These associations remained significant after adjustment for dietary factors, including total energy intake and intakes of saturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids.”
This increase in risk was not slight. As reported by CNN,18 people in the highest quartile of elaidic acid levels were 74% more likely to develop dementia. Those in the second-highest quartile had a 52% higher risk.
Of the various processed foods found to contribute to elevated elaidic acid levels, pastries were the biggest contributors, followed by margarine, candy, caramels, croissants, nondairy creamers, ice cream and rice crackers.19
Oxidized Omega-6 — Another Harmful Fat to Stay Clear Of
While it’s clearly important to avoid trans fat, processed oils are the primary culprit in most Western diseases.
This is largely related to the oxidized omega-6 fat found in them, which may actually be even worse than trans fat. Now, omega-6 fat (linolenic acid) in and of itself is not the problem. Linoleic acid is also found in foods such as nuts, seeds and eggs, and is important for health. The problem is oxidized omega-6 fat, and the fact that most people eat far too much of it.
For years, I’ve stressed the importance of balancing your omega-3 to omega-6 intake to protect your health. Ideally, get an omega-3 index test done once a year to make sure you’re in a healthy range. Your omega-3 index should be above 8% and your omega 6-to-3 ratio between 0.5 and 3.0. To correct a lopsided omega-3 to omega-6 ratio, you typically need to:
1.Significantly decrease intake of damaged omega-6 by avoiding processed foods and foods cooked in vegetable oil at high temperatures. Common sources of harmful omega-6 include corn oil, canola oil, soy oil, hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated fats, margarine and shortening.
2.Increase your intake of animal-based omega-3 fats from sardines, anchovies, herring and wild-caught Alaskan salmon, or take a supplement such as krill oil, all of which provide you with DHA bound to phospholipids.
Research20,21 suggests DHA bound to phospholipids (not triglycerides, which is what you find in most fish oil supplements) may be particularly important for those with the APOE4 gene, which predisposes them to Alzheimer’s.
Low Cholesterol Can Impact Your Dementia Risk
Another dietary factor that has been shown to influence your risk for Alzheimer’s is low cholesterol. While there are many warnings about high total cholesterol, low levels can have equally serious repercussions. In fact, a number of studies have demonstrated the importance of higher cholesterol for the prevention of Alzheimer’s specifically.
According to senior research scientist Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D., insufficient fat and cholesterol in your brain play a crucial role in the Alzheimer’s disease process, detailed in her 2009 paper22 “APOE-4: The Clue to Why Low Fat Diet and Statins May Cause Alzheimer’s.” A 2014 study23 in JAMA Neurology came to a similar conclusion, stating that:
“Cholesterol, vital to neuronal structure and function, has important roles in the synthesis, deposition, and clearance of β-amyloid (Aβ) and may have a pathogenic role in Alzheimer disease (AD) … There are also important connections among apolipoprotein E (APOE), Aβ, and cholesterol.
A strong genetic risk factor for AD, the APOE ε4 allele is associated with earlier and higher deposition of Aβ. APOE is the primary transporter of cholesterol in the brain, and its isoforms differentially modulate brain cholesterol levels.”
Here, the researchers found that higher levels of HDL and lower levels of LDL were associated with a reduced risk for amyloid plaque deposits in the brain, and these findings were independent of age and presence of the APOE4 gene. Study co-author Dr. Charles DeCarli, a professor of neurology at UC Davis and director of the UC Davis Alzheimer’s Disease Center, offered the following advice, based on the results:24
“If you have an LDL above 100 or an HDL that is less than 40 … you want to make sure that you’re getting those numbers into alignment. You have to get the HDL up and the LDL down.”
That said, research25 published in 2008 found that elderly individuals who were not genetically predisposed to Alzheimer’s disease who had the highest levels of cholesterol — including the highest levels of LDL — had the best memory, so the verdict is still out on whether high LDL is a significant risk factor.
Healthy Eating Habits Protect Your Brain Function
To summarize the key dietary factors reviewed here, diets high in healthy fats, omega-3 DHA bound to phospholipids, and flavonols from fruits, vegetables and tea, will help protect against Alzheimer’s.
Dietary factors that deteriorate brain health and raise your dementia risk include diets high in refined sugar, grains, trans fats, industrially processed vegetable oils (high in damaged omega-6) and insufficient cholesterol.
- 1 Alz.org 2019 Disease Facts and Figures
- 2 J Alzheimers Dis. 2012; 32(2):329-339
- 3 Neurology January 29, 2020 DOI: 10.1212/WNL.000000000008981
- 4 UPI January 30, 2020
- 5 Reuters January 30, 2020
- 6 European Journal of Preventive Cardiology January 8, 2020 DOI: 10.1177/2047487319894685
- 7 Science Daily January 9, 2020
- 8 JAMA Neurology July 27, 2015. doi:10.1001/jamaneurol.2015.0613v
- 9 NEJM August 8, 2013; 369:540-548
- 10 Medicinenet.com March 31, 2014
- 11 Diabetologia January 25, 2018; 61: 839-848
- 12 JAMA Neurology 2015;72(9):1013-1020
- 13 Huffington Post July 29, 2015
- 14 British Journal of Nutrition 2015 Jul 14;114(1):1-14
- 15 Blogs.PLOS.org, July 16, 2016
- 16, 17 Neurology October 23, 2019, DOI: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000008464
- 18, 19 CNN October 24, 2019
- 20 FASEB Journal October 5, 2018
- 21 PR Newswire October 25, 2018
- 22 MIT.edu APOE-4: The Clue to Why Low Fat Diet and Statins May Cause Alzheimer’s by Stephanie Seneff
- 23 JAMA Neurology 2014;71(2):195-200
- 24 Medical News Today December 31, 2014
- 25 American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry 2008 Sep;16(9):781-5