Monday, January 27, 2014

lying or ignorant

For years now, I've heard the "experts" insist that goitrogenic vegetables are FINE as long as you cook them!  I mean -- vegetables are S0-0-0-0-O good for you!  It would be dangerous to restrict non-starchy vegetables (even though the paleoids snicker at those who insist that GRAINS are important sources of nutrition and shouldn't be limited).

Experience proves the contrary.  Which is why I respect doctors who present and stick by what they find to work in clinical practice ... but not "the other kind."

I was doing great, "coming down" from my nutritional excesses in N'Orleans!  Within a very few days I was in ketosis again.  THEN a neighbor invited us over for a group dinner and I "sinned" again (why do some people actually take pride in "making" us eat things that are bad for us?).  I felt really (physically) horrible for a day or so, but some fasting brought me back to the place I was before, and I am now solidly back in ketosis.  J cooked the main course at dinner last night (an Indian dish of cod with a yogurt sauce), but "let" me cook the cauliflower, which needed to be used.  I made my faux Party Potatoes dish, and it WAS delicious.  But he put a huge mound of it on my plate, and I STUPIDLY finished it.

NEWS FLASHcauliflower and the rest of its tribe are goitrogens.  They're goitrogenous raw.  They're goitrogenous cooked.  They're REALLY goitrogenous fermented.  Short version, they're FUCKING GOITROGENS.

I woke up this morning after sleeping the clock around.  I was cold.  I was dopey.  I was suffering from a big hairy nightmarish lack of thyroid function.  I ate ONE CUP OF COOKED CAULIFLOWER, and did nothing else that would have lowered it.

So don't listen to gurus who proclaim, SURE you can eat all the leafy green vegetables you want!  They're healthy!  They're low-carb!  They're loaded with vitamins and minerals and antioxidants and all those lovely dietician-approved phytochemicals that everyone wants to sell you in pill form!

In fact, thiol-containing vegetables cause more problems than they could possibly resolve.  Not just for people with "thyroid trouble" -- anyone who benefits from a low-histamine or failsafe diet is well advised to stay the hell away from cruciferous vegetables aka brassicas.  Especially, don't eat them fermented!  I grit my teeth every time broscience recommends home-made sauerkraut or kimchee....

24 comments:

  1. You can have too many antioxidants, too, especially if you're not eating oxidating foods like grains. Some things in your body are *supposed* to get oxidized.

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  2. Tess, I never noticed being cold or unwell in any form after eating cauliflower or fermented cabbage. I can have problems with nightshades, especially cooked tomatoes. I had problems in a past after eating too much cilantro, raspberries, pineapples, red apples. Citruses and strawberries are almost dangerous for me. No way vegetables are super-foods - it is the best way to practice moderation, that is it.
    There are nuts who take pride from derailing somebodies diet. It makes them feel morally better while not avoiding their wrong foods. Also, in America ignoring own circumstances is often perceived like some sort of resilience and civil bravery.

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    1. Possibly, part of the benefit some people get in eating a bushel of vegetables is in what they're *not* eating: beer and doughnuts.

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    2. It is beneficial as a substitute for donuts, and it is better to have veggies on a side of your meat/fish than mashed potatoes, but taking pills with antioxidants looks iffy for me. However, my mom enormously stretched her stomach eating huge volumes of salads and soups. Makes binged eating of wrong food more comfortable.
      There are several blogs of LCarbers who eat like rabbits.

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    3. Galina, i suspect it may be because you take exogenous thyroid and i don't. my native function is enough to get me by while my diet is good-to-perfect, but if i eat or breathe the wrong thing, i meet my threshold! i'm sensitive to nightshades too, but VERY sensitive to brassicas!

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    4. Sure it could be the case. I am guessing my thyroid cells are ok, just some of it is missing due to immune system actions.

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  3. my sin is pepper jack cheese, but just think about all those healthy vegetables I am getting in each serving.

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    1. It looks like most people are fine eating vegetables as a side dish, it creates variety, and small amount of flavonoids could have hermetic effect. I remember how we all craved fresh greens during the time when only cabbage, winter apples and root and fermented vegetables were available, during winter time. I am not 100 years old, only 53, but I came from another country.

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    2. :-) and I like reading historical sources, so I hear the same thing! family stories abound of my grandmother going out in the yard to pick the first dandelion greens of spring, and also pulling the car over (1930s) to check a place where she knew watercress could be found.

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  4. It is so interesting to read around the blogs and discover how certain foods do have a different effect on each of us, so many variables it would seem. Looking back over the years I guess I have been very fortunate ... the only food that doesn't seem to agree with me are cucumbers ... them and my digestive system do not get on too well, so I have only a slice or two in a salad. With my mum it was strawberries she could not eat too many of them, it caused a skin rash.

    The older we get the wiser we get (or we should) as to what foods our bodies can tolerate, sometimes we ignore what we know, and this then has to be rectified.

    I think whatever age you are there is still lots to be discovered, read about - and that's good. Well I think it is !

    All the best Jan

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    1. Ha! I was about to say in previous comment that so far the 100% safe veggies were cucumbers, lettuce and zucchinis, but it looks like my opinion was wrong. No, vegetables are not the perfect foundation for every diet, and there is a fiber-sensitivity issue as well.

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    2. yep, it looks like my safe veggie is another woman's poison! :-)

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  5. Tess, I also remember how our little gang of children all aged between 6 and 10 years old, was also on a constant look-out for what to put in our mouths from environment. We were not poor and underfed, just regular children from middle-class families where both parents worked. Snack food didn't exist then. It was considered then safe for a children to play unsupervised in groups, we often wondered quite far away. Since then I remember which part of certain flowers to pull out to find a tiny drop of a nectar, that you can pull of a segment of a grass-stem and find a tender light-green 1/4 inch long almost sweet tip which was pleasant to nibble, I still do it. Linden seeds are small but very tasty inside. Linden buds also are tasty in spring right before they turn into leaves. Grass-stem is pleasantly sour after some time spend in an anthill. Young shots of almost any ferns are suitable for sauteing.Of course, there are different berries and mushrooms. My grandma routinely sent us to fetch wild sorrel if she planned to make a sorrel soup. It was not controversial at all, everybody did it. Collecting wild mushrooms and wild berries is still a popular hobby in Russia. I went to a special field trip in Florida to find out more about eatable plants because I wanted to collect it here too, but to my amazement , there were way much less eatable plants here than in a temperate climate. I am also concerned about wide pesticide and herbeside use in US and regular local pesticide treatment against mosquitoes.

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    1. so true! there was a little weed in our back yard where I grew up, which had a tiny yellow flower and a seed pod (?) which we nibbled on and called "pickles".... :-) we too pulled young shoots of grass and ate the white part, and pulled the innards out of honeysuckle to taste the honey....

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  6. "Possibly, part of the benefit some people get in eating a bushel of vegetables is in what they're *not* eating: beer and doughnuts."

    Lori, great insight. Some people still need/want a full belly...

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    1. just like the studies which "proved" the excellence of healthywholegrains only compared them to unhealthyrefinedgrains....

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    2. ...a full belly, without looking like Homer Simpson.

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  7. "I respect doctors who present and stick by what they find to work in clinical practice..."
    Yes, unfortunately most doctors work according to the following dictum:
    'It may work in practice, but if it doesn't work in theory, ignore it."

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    1. ...as encouraged by researchers whose reputations take a beating when their grand theories [ahem] don't work in the real world. ;-)

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  8. Well, I am one of those people who can't live without me's spinach, but I don't force them on anyone (anymore lol!) I don't think all these folks are lying. I think it is more of, "if it didn't happen to me, it doesn't exist".

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    1. your last sentence is absolute GOLD.

      vegetables are important! :-) you can't have Oysters Rockefeller Bisque without spinach!!! my life would be significantly diminished without onions, celery, peppers, mushrooms, squash, etc!

      I just think that "authorities" telling EVERYONE that they should eat "mostly plants" IS ignorance and lies. :-)

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  9. why don't you take thyroid medication tess?
    Drugs are not evil, I wish there were effective drugs for my health problems.

    If anything is shown to be dangerous, it's consistently undermedicating hypothyroidism.

    Paleo needs to get over this food as medicinedrugs are evil bullshit. I suspect ppl like rn are only as crazy random and depressed as they are because they ignorantly believe the paleo diet substitutes levothyroxine in thyroid patient.

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    1. Damn -- I only just saw this comment.... It SHOULD be answered, so I will, even after all this time.

      No, pharmaceuticals are NOT evil ... IF you need them. I don't believe I do, now that I've figured out what works for me and what doesn't. I'm symptom-free as long as I eat what my body wants. Therefore, I use feelings such as I described above to determine what my body DOES approve of and I generally avoid what it DOESN'T.

      It's like antibiotics -- if I get an infection that doesn't answer to traditional remedies, YES i'll take them. But I do think they're problematic to take them for every little thing.

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