I have an anecdote, and again it has nothing to do with diet.
One of my dearest, first friends in reenacting -- gone from us now -- was a history TEACHER as so many are, before he changed his job to an even more hard-core history career. He became one of the main organizers of the reformulated museum, when the Oklahoma Historical Society got its big new building. Like many reenactors, he spent his work-days immersed in history, his hobby was history, his vacations became busman-holidays through visiting sites of historical interest, he read himself to sleep at night with books on the subject, and for all I know he dreamed history every night.
The only difference of opinion I ever remember having with Murphy involved the etymology of an important historic WORD, and I was right -- I can document it with an indisputable LINGUISTIC source. His reason for believing his version was a volunteer at some historic venue who told him a bogus story. Surely they had their facts straight! ...? Hmph.
In language, this happens ALL THE TIME -- people use their imaginations to try to figure out where a word or expression came from, and the more clever and creative it seems to the modern ear, the more likely it is to be flat wrong. The Oxford English Dictionary was written by folks who had a passion for language, profound knowledge, and a lot of resources to hand, and if they can show when a word first showed up and how it traveled through time, they ARE to be trusted.
Now i'll seem to change the subject, but i'll refer back later. ;-) I loved that show, Connections, back in the '70s....
_____
When the foolishness of my RWNJ contacts on facebook get me down, I scoot on over to twitter, where those people are not on my contact list. There, I read the output of people like Eades, Johnson, Kindke and Lagakos* ... and they never post Grumpycat memes! ;-) One link I followed and enjoyed featured three different researchers talking about how the microbiome "news" has been dealt with by the media and their scientific sources.
All three agreed that it's way too early to intelligently apply what has been learned thus far -- it's TOO COMPLICATED to really know HOW to best use this knowledge. Certainly, the advertisers of the information have spread it around in too simplified a form.
Compare this point of view to the wild-eyed promoters of prebiotic starch and fiber! We MUST feed our pet (thanks to Galina for this analogy) gut-bugs, o' they gonna DIE!
Nope. They survived through famines of the past, and they'll survive now. What is MOST damaging to their populations is what most of US avoid unless absolutely necessary: clean-sweep antibiotics. WE don't need to eat so as to specifically feed these pets ... unless we WANT to. Some people really seem to want to have a good excuse to eat potatoes and other "carriers" of bacteria-food.
That's fine. If they want to, let 'em. But this is like Sisson saying YES you MUST eat vegetables -- the science doesn't support it. Some, maybe most, people LIKE this advice, but the beneficence is NOT universal. Don't tell EVERYBODY that they MUST eat _____ ... <-- insert YOUR favorite carbohydrate here. I don't even tell people they must eat liver any more. ;-)
This is just like Murphy's stubbornness in insisting that some piece of sophistry he heard from a self-enlightened "expert" was true, despite it being demonstrably NOT so. Because you LIKE a hypothesis is not evidence in its defense. It may be far more intricate than your understanding of it may imply. Getting an authority to agree with you in generalities doesn't make it true as you understand it.
It also comes back to DETAILS in the studies they cite so supernumerously. ;-) Extrapolating uncritically from mouse studies to human application is bad enough, but consider how even human-study subjects are not often clean-eating, toxin-avoiding, or nutrient-replete individuals. Who cares if some college boy subsisting on beer and pizza doesn't have the same gut-bugs as Hadza HGs -- shit, I don't have the same ones he does. MY gut-bugs are adequate to handle my preferred diet, which is not: 1) beer and pizza, OR 2) high-fiber African tubers ... AND I haven't had a course of antibiotics in decades.
EVERYTHING tends to be more complicated than people are inclined to think ... including all of us armchair-scientists. The devil is in the details. And the details are exactly what get skimmed past when reading journalists' articles and study abstracts.
_____
The word Murphy and I disagreed on was GOSSIP. Some dumb-ass tour-guide announced that it derived from the words "go sip" which was what you did in the tavern, which was where everyone used to go to pick up the latest juicy news. No. It goes back through Middle English gossib, to godsib, to the OLD English godsibb, which meant basically a sibling in God. Your gossip (noun) was your good buddy with whom you gossiped (verb) -- thus making the shared news "gossip" (back to noun).
See? ;-) More complicated than you expected.
_____
* it was with grief that I removed Bill from my blog list -- it seems that something about his site was causing MINE to be objectionable to virus-detectors. :-(
I just re-read Peter's post on fiaf in order to clear my head a little bit after the microbiote discussion
ReplyDeletehttp://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/search/label/Fiaf%20%281%29%20Who%27s%20fat%20is%20it%20anyway%3F
OMG, It was posted 7 years ago! Of course, Peter is not a god who knows everything, but reading about his thoughts on a subject is always a mind journey.
"EVERYTHING tends to be more complicated than people are inclined to think " - indeed.
I guess in order to give themselves a perspective on the complexity of a self-regulated system, people should more often observe meteorologists who regularly fail to give an accurate forecast for a longer period than two weeks. As a Florida resident, I can tell poor guys are totally unable to predict something accurate for next 6 months at the beginning of a hurricane season, and they have their degrees , super-fast computers, state-of-the-art software and huge amount of money. Compare all that with the reading around done by Richard and his team, thoughts of Mark Sisson and even the resources of the whole Human Microbiome. Project.
I have to give Richard his due- it was him who was talking about his personal microbes as dear pets (I thought it sounded silly), may be he thinks about his dogs as children and consider other people have to treat their children as gods (he attempted to reproach me for telling it could be convenient for Inuit mothers to shut a child up at night with a nipple in order not to interrupt sleep too much, and to keep breastfeeding longer for the conveniences, not for providing a carbohydrates-reach food ).
is that why he thinks HG cultures breast-feed a long time? silly man.... as if cultures like that traditionally thought "gotta let the kid have more carbs" and not "we know that the longer we nurse them, the healthier they are and the fewer babies we have....
DeleteIt was Dugh, the most intelligent of the whole bag team who told me that Inuit mothers did all they could to provide their children with as much carbohydrates as possible - they breastfed them till 4 yo and gave them a bread as the first human food. I told him that all traditional cultures breastfed their children that long for the reason of multiple conveniences, and bread was , unfortunately, a very convenient food.
DeleteSorry, not Doug, but Duck Dodgers . He also said Inuits mothers were right to give bread to their infants. It is logical to expect the next step in the diet recommendations on the FTA blog, and it should be posts about bread not being that bad after all. It is a logical after allowing more starches, limiting fat and the emphasizing the necessity to eat 40 grams of fiber a day by Tim. Jane and Tim impressed each other when meeting on the Hyperlipid blog, I am sure she will be very helpful in a cherry-picking the research about the wonders of a whole grain bread and Mn in a brown rice.
Deletewhat a circus this has turned into! I just sit here shaking my head....
DeleteProbably Peter is shaking his head too, but his well-developed sense of humor may come to a rescue.
DeleteHi Tess
ReplyDeleteVery, very off topic but check this out RN goes for the honesty gig.
http://freetheanimal.com/2014/12/better-honesty-history.html#comments
Kind regards Eddie
I read the first couple of paragraphs, and barely skimmed the rest. Gag-worthy. I wouldn't call it honesty, i'd call it an attempt at damage control and an attempt to boost viewings via salacious material. If I were Sisson i'd break off communications, because associating with this jerk is going to damage HIS reputation.
DeleteHi Tess
DeleteFancy doing a low carb book with me and my pal Graham? No full frontal nude pics required honest.
I'll get me coat. I know the way out LOL
Kind regards Tess
I meant kind regards Eddie, I have been laughing so much I have lost my grip.
DeleteEddie
;-) I intuited that....
DeleteLOL --the frontal-nudity shot would spoil our low-carb book, anyway -- we want people to find the concept of LCHF foods appealing, we don't want them nauseated!
He removed the post, I think it is better that way for everybody involved
DeleteGOOD. if I were Grace I would have gotten myself a good lawyer....
DeleteAfter I skimmed that strange post, I obviously thought Richard finally crossed the line of what people could swallow, however the rape post was close. No one of his internet buddies seems to be uncomfortable. May be they have some sort of an agreement of not criticizing one another in order not to spoil to each other book sales? Dr.Eades commented Richard was a pleasant person when he met him in a real life. May he behaves normally in social settings, but gets loose on-line. Wooo complained about several very inappropriate emals she received from RN.
ReplyDeleteHi Tess
ReplyDeleteMy old man once had a dog that was a lot of fun, with old age it went completely batshit and dangerous. Alas he had to have it put down.
Kind regards Eddie
As a LC zealot, I am jumping to a conclusion that the dog was fed too many grains and it damaged his brain as he aged, so he went batshit.;-).
DeleteHearing Wooo twitter about how some dementia patients become dangerous, I can believe that heartily! One of the WORST things that's ever been spread around is that "the brain can only use glucose as fuel" ... which we now know is completely false! But now, most people are convinced of the former.
DeletePerhaps when Mike Eades met Nikoley he was functioning normally on LC, and he has since come down with Grain Brain?
Yes, I noticed it in even in not demented people who when got more mentally slow with age, get more easily to be irritated and aggressive. Richard also cut on animal fats in order to eat more rice and beans without gaining weight. It is not only eating more of sub-optimal food, but also consuming less of the foods which are good for a brain.
DeleteProbably, grain-brained dogs are more fortunate than grain-fed humans who also receive brain-damaging drugs and get jailed away from a normal human society in huge nursing homes.
DeleteVERY good point -- when they're old and physically miserable, it's ethical to euthanize dogs, cats, etc. I REALLY feel sorry for old people with such poor quality-of-life (and the people who love them), because it can only get worse, until they die of "natural causes." :-(
DeleteIn close on seven years that was the most ludicrous post I have ever read posted by a big time blogger. As you said Galina it has been taken down. What is staggering is how many of the faithful praised the post and talked of honesty etc.
ReplyDeleteHow batshit does a post have to be over there before someone says you are talking complete bollocks Richard, we need to be told.
Eddie
I guess the only person who may give the message like "Richard, you are acting like you went totally batshit crazy, clean it up or else" through is one of his more intelligent bag buddies. They wouldn't wont more controversy when they intend to try to sell some books about benefits of fibers. For better or for worse Richard is more gifted in aggravating others than bringing different people on the same page. I guess his faithful are just entertained by all that .
DeleteI have told Richard point-blank that in his making too much noise about Inuits not being in a constant ketosis (saying things like Inuits example was a big stinky lie) he follows the example of the people who tried to devalue Gary Taubes work on the ground he was saying that without dietary glucose it was impossible to get fat, while it was the usual
Delete"EVERYTHING tends to be more complicated than people are inclined to think "
situation. It is more of the metabolism is more complicated than we think issue than people realize than an attempt to fool anyone. Gary was discussing details of functioning of complex system, and it can be tricky for basically everyone, however, he was well qualified to present the the history of dieting and the development of current healthy diet guidelines - the result of even more misunderstanding of how a body functions.
Richard acts like without Inuits being in ketosis all LCarbing turnes into a fad.