First, a disclaimer: Most of the links are from Stephan Guyenet's Whole Health Source. Even the studies. I've had a glass of wine (cabernet - low carb!) and I'm lazy, and his blog is just too damn easy to use.
Al-ibn Kermit said:
Sorry for the late response but this with regards to a post you made about a week ago. This is the original post:
http://neogaf.net/forum/showpost.php?p=21709160&postcount=1132
So you're assuming that people on carb-centric diets naturally develop hyperinsulimia and then become type 2 diabetics which causes them to store too much fat? That doesn't make sense, modern Japan has the lowest obesity rate in the developed world and yet has a very low fat diet. That source shows that the caloric intake is going up and when you absorb the calories, you will do something with them. Why absorb fat energy when it can only be stored as fat?
I'm not saying everyone on a high carbohydrate diet is going to develop hyperinsulinemia. But probably about 1/3 of the population as my best guess. People's sensitivity to insulin varies with genetics it seems.
I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on the Japanese diet. Any Japanese gaffers reading this? I'm under the impression they eat a lot of vegetables (land and sea based), fish, brown rice, fermented soy, eggs, and meat.
Brown rice is better than white (it infuriates me that one doctor somehow recommends low fat from this data):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/10307790.stm
It's not just as simple as the glycemic index. Minerals also play a role, and anti-minerals like phytic acid from wheat and soy. Phytic acid is especially high without fermentation, which we don't do.
Brown rice also has more minerals:
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/02/dietary-fiber-and-mineral-availability.html
Particularly magnesium:
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2010/02/magnesium-and-insulin-sensitivity.html
The japanese get several times the iodine than Americans:
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/05/iodine.html
which counters the toxic nature of soy on the thyroid (probably, need more studies):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18281260
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20463299
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17472472
The more probable reason for the increase in obesity in the west is that food is just getting cheaper. It's becoming more about want than need, so people naturally gravitate towards what tastes good and they eat more of it.
Do you have any data to support this?
Because basically this infers that the human body's hunger and fat metabolism are inherently broken and always have been. That people always will overeat. Pretty bold claim. Are there any accounts of high rates of obesity in any country before 1970?
And to counter this, refer to the link I gave to Taubes lecture, later part of part 1/7, and beginning of part 2/7. There are tribes that were reported to have an over-abundance of food in the early 1800s - meat, fish, berries, some grains, vegetables, that were reported remarkably fit and healthy. This same tribe then became impoverished and was provided government rations of which were 50% grains. This tribe is now studied because it has the highest rate of diabetes in the world. There are mothers > 40% body fat with 2000 calorie diets with skinny as a rail children. This tribe is the Pima.
Yes of course insulin will eventually cause monosaccharides to be stored as fat. How does that make you crave more calories? Leptin itself is like I mentioned a much more likely cause of chronic obesity, because of how you produce more leptin as you gain more fat and whenever you lose fat, your body has cravings for leptin which in turn cause you to be hungry.
Honestly it could be either leptin or insulin that causes obesity. Sort of a chicken and egg scenario.
One thing is certain: not all fat people respond to leptin (the study below they injected people with leptin, some didn't respond at all):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15743109
" Whereas leptin has been successfully used in the treatment of leptin-deficient obese patients, trials in hyperleptinemic obese patients have yielded variable results. Long-acting leptins have been tried but with no greater success. Other strategies including the use of leptin analogs and other factors that bypass normal leptin delivery systems are being developed. Identifying the mechanisms at the molecular level by which leptin functions will create new avenues for pharmaceutical targeting to simulate the intracellular effects of leptin."
There are a few theories on this, to which I'm not too familiar.
1. High carb diet causes high triglycercies, and high triglycercides reduces the amount of leptin that can cross the blood brain barrier to reach the hypothalamus. Here carbs/insulin are the cause.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15111494
2. Hyperinsulinemia creates scar tissue on the hypothalamus, making it less responsive to leptin. Here carbs/insulin are the cause.
(taubes refers to this, too lazy to look up right now)
3. Lectins from wheat somehow play a role (here leptin is the cause, but it just so happens insulin/carbs are by chance also around):
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/04/leptin-and-lectins-part-iii.html
You're talking about a tribe that subsisted on a very low carb diet? That's something I have never done so my body wouldn't be adapted to their particular diet. That's why I mentioned Japan, they are an example of a modern carb-centric society that obviously has a diet that works well for them.
Again, not too sure about the Japanese diet. Would love some data to prove me wrong so I can rethink it. But as I posted above, not all carbs are equal. Wheat and sugar are particularly nasty.
So you're agreeing that nobody has enough scientific evidence to say one way or the other right? Okay, I can agree with you on this I guess.
To make public dietary nutritional advice, yes I agree.
The implication of having low fat be government approved is that even doctors that agree with the insulin/leptin theory cannot recommend their patients without fear of getting sued for malpractice if the patient has heart problems for another reason.
It also redirects funding for studies under the assumption that Ancel Key's diet-heart/lipid hypothesis is correct. It totally breaks the scientific method and basically halts scientific research in human health.
The purpose of insulin is to store calories as glycogen, which are easier to metabolize into ATP, and of course glycogen can only come from carbs. After your glycogen stores are filled up, the calories just go into the only other energy reserves, fat. What is the advantage of trying to get calories from fat?
The advantage is avoiding the chronic and degenerative diseases that kill most people today. Heart disease, cancer, diabetes... admittedly only relevant for those that don't have high insulin sensitivity.
As far as insulin sensitivity goes, yes that varies wildly from person to person but it's fair to say that if somebody is on a reasonable number of calories, exercises regularly, and is on a carb-centric diet than this is not something that they should worry about.
I don't agree with this because if you have an insulin sensitivity problem, the solution is to reduce insulin and tag team glucose metabolism with fat metabolism. The answer isn't to run on a wheel like a hamster while ignoring hunger in hopes that you'll balance an energy equation that's regulation by hormones. That would be like a man injecting himself with estrogen and then doing 200 pushups to spot reduce fat on the chest.
Or a more medical example a gigantism patient eating less to avoid vertical growth instead of inhibiting growth hormone.
Not a fair question really, those come from different parts of the world and only relatively recently could we have all of them being grown in one country. The Native Americans that subsisted on maize were extremely healthy though, I can tell you that.
Do you have any data showing that native americans ate maize as a major part of their diet? They didn't have groceries, that stuff was seasonal. They hunted bison and other wild game and ate vegetables too.
Well I'm willing to believe you on the saturated fats claim but I still don't know a lot about the metabolism of them. That's a lot of information to check up on though so thank you for linking it.
More:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8SSCNaaDcE&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPPYaVcXo1I
I mean this is pretty damning to the diet-heart hypothesis. If you have data that refutes a hypothesis this much, it's just wrong. That's how science works.