rant alert

If I read another overstated caution to hypothyroids about low-carb diets by half-educated quacks I think i'll ... WRITE YET ANOTHER RANT.  ;-)

There's a new pseudo-reason for people with poor thyroid function to eschew VLC -- I guess the nonsense about LC "causing hypothyroidism" has been efficiently branded as bullshit, and the wannabe-gurus are grasping at new straws!  This time we hear that VLC is bad for us because [gasp] "insulin is required for proper thyroid-hormone conversion."

REALITY CHECK:  if you eat adequate protein and are not T1-diabetic, there's plenty of insulin available for any reasonable process.  BULLSHIT CALLED.  AGAIN.

And even more BS (if one needs more evidence of inadequate competence in some circles) -- promoting foods such as sweet potatoes and yucca to a hypothyroid is just plain ignorant.  They're GOITROGENS, you moron.

Not everybody NEEDS a VLC diet, but some of us feel much better on one, largely because our bodies react badly to higher blood-sugar, and to those mild toxins which other people praise as "antioxidants."  Hormesis is only a good thing if you don't cross that poison-dose threshold, and for some of us that threshold is very low.

The symptoms of hypothyroidism can be induced by any significant insult to the body:  surgery, infection, malnutrition, severe physical or emotional stress, "poisoning" by histaminergic foods and environmental factors, chronic lack of sleep, deleterious gut-bugs, and excessive exercise and low-calorie dieting among others.  For self-anointed "experts" to proclaim a low-carb diet to be "stressful" is ... oh, i'm inclined to call it FUCKING STUPID ... but some people are offended by that kind of vehemence.  It's not stressful to the body in and of itself, or a lot of hunter-gatherers wouldn't have been marvelously strong and healthy eating that way.

VLC eating is only "stressful" to people who jump into it without learning how to do it right, to those who have severely messed-up metabolisms, and to the suckers who have been sold the idea they can eat whatever they want and still lose weight and thrive on ANY kinds of food, so long as they take their multivitamin every day and limit calories.  I.E., it's stressful psychologically if you think you're entitled to eat like an obesity-resistant young jock, and feel deprived.  It's stressful if you've lost your metabolic flexibility and haven't taken the time to adapt to burning fat as a primary fuel.  It's stressful if you eat nothing but muscle-meat every single day for extended periods.  It's stressful if it's only a junk-food diet in low-carb clothes. 

LIES like "the body requires carbohydrates" bring out the berserker in me.  There is NOTHING we require that is in carbohydrate foods but can't be found in more absorbable and complete form in animal products.  Anyone who says otherwise either has an agenda or ... is gullible enough to think that what is taught by BigPharm/BigAg-financed institutions is actually true.

why systemic enzymes are important for me?

I've been a proponent of systemic enzymes for years now.  23andMe may be giving me a hint as to WHY.

It's been established for a long time that one's production of enzymes is generous in childhood through young-adult years, then begins to dwindle after the age of 27.  An easily-visible example of this lies in one's wound-healing as one gets older, the writers on this subject tell us -- we get a cut or skinned knee in gradeschool, and after it heals the scar tends to be thin and pliable, but in later life one's scars are thicker, stiffer and more unsightly.  I see the difference between pre-supplementing scars and the ones that I've acquired more recently;  when Spense bit me six or seven years ago, he really ripped up the skin beside my left thumbnail, but you can't see the traces unless you use a magnifying glass.  Not so, for the first scar he gave me!

"Authorities" like Dr. Wm. Wong tell us that this happens inside the body as well as outside:  surgeries and other internal insults cause fibrous scar tissue to build up, and our organs' functionality can suffer.  Supplemental proteolitic enzymes travel about our bodies cleaning up the excess fibrin that our natural supply did when we were younger.  Fibrous plugs in our smaller blood vessels, fibrin thickening our lymphatic fluid, fibrosis in our lungs and other organs, all eaten by the serrapeptase and nattokinase in systemic enzyme supplements....

As a child, my wounds didn't heal as invisibly as some kids' did.  Look closely at my knees, and you can see the Ghosts of Bike-Spills Past.  When i was about ten, i ruptured my spleen at Girl Scout camp;  the surgical scar is bright and clear and well-raised, after all these decades.

And guess what 23andMe reveals -- some risks of fibroid disease (pulmonary) and keloids (and maybe some other fibrosis-related disorders that i don't know enough about to speculate).  I should have expected it.  But this thing has started me wondering, did i suffer from inadequate endogenous enzyme production in my earliest years perhaps?  My old scars would seem to be evidence in that direction.

Whatever the case, i'm inclined to hypothesize that anyone who observes a genetic risk of fibrotic diseases, whether by DNA testing or simply the existence of hypertrophic scarring, would probably benefit from supplementing with a good systemic/proteolytic enzyme!  ...Oh, and zinc too (thanks, George!).

information beginning to trickle in

I got good news yesterday -- my 23andMe sample has been analyzed, and the data is starting to arrive!

Only the preliminary health information has arrived, but it's interesting so far.  First, they tell me that I have 3.3% Neanderthal DNA.  I was predicting that THAT was going to be on the high side, because of my stocky build and unattractive profile, but I probably wouldn't have expected being in the 99th percentile....

Of the "high confidence"-quality associations, it turns out that I don't have VERY high likelihood of being predisposed to illness save in age-related macular degeneration, gallstones, lung cancer, bipolarity, and limited cutaneous type scleroderma.  Since i'm a non-smoking low-carber, i'm not too worried.

Interestingly enough, some things I have minor risks for, I also have ameliorating genes for as well.  Take the bipolar thing -- I have a 0.20% risk as compared to the 0.14% which is "normal."  However, on the list of "decreased risk" results, I ALSO have bipolar disorder -- one reduced-risk marker, and two "typical" ones.  Mercifully, there's no record of other family members having a problem with this disorder.

Predictably I have two increased-risk markers for hypothyroidism alongside three normal ones, and I have a moderately-increased (not "substantially-increased) risk on the one gene they identified for Hashimoto's thyroiditis.  Looks to me as though the wrong diet is enough to epigenetically push a borderline case like me over into active hypothyroidism.

I eagerly look forward to getting the rest of my results over the next couple of weeks, and to plugging my results into the other SNP-decoding services I've heard of.  But the first wave of information I've received is not bad -- i'm sure glad I did this!

my answer to overindulgence

Under circumstances like the christmas holidays, i'm not as strict with myself as I am ordinarily.  This week has been one of those times.

It's not that I practice austere privation on an everyday basis -- i'm NOT an austere kind of person!  I always fully appreciated dear Mr Wilde's epigram "Nothing succeeds like excess."  [evil grin]

No, I just know how much better I feel when I eat what a lot of people would consider an extremely limited diet!  Coffee (both hot and iced), beef, lamb, a modicum of eggs, pork and poultry, a small amount of cheese and wine, and a little garnish of vegetable matter like mushrooms, onions, tomatoes and nuts, and i'm thoroughly content.  The "paleo musts" like big-ass salads and fermented vegetables do nothing but chap my innards, and 85% chocolate I actually find rather boring and not at all life-enhancing.  Butter is something I put on vegetables to make them palatable, or on cuts of meat which are too lean, like tenderloin or white-meat.  Cream is how you make poor coffee drinkable, and another way to boost the satiation potential in naturally-low-fat dishes.

But occasionally, a day is made less stressful by NOT going to great lengths to find ideal food.  When traveling with others, for instance, it sometimes saves a lot of time and trouble to cave in and get lunch at the fast-food place that's close to the highway, and where it's easy to eat in the car because you can't leave the dog alone.  Then there was the time we went to the special dinner benefitting a local arts group.  Yesterday I could have been a lot more disciplined, too -- I blame the champagne.

What to do when I kick over the traces?  Hate myself?  Throw everything to the winds and binge?  At my age, I've probably tried every choice there is at one time or another, but I like to think i'm a little wiser now.  I just take the situation as a cue to start a 20-hour coffee fast and consider the whole experience as a carb re-feed.  What some people might consider a failure, I prefer to think is an opportunity to teach my body that resources are plentiful and it can afford to waste energy via a leptin surge.  It's not a setback!  It's an indirect signal to my thyroid that my body does not need to conserve resources.

There is a philosophy that calorie restriction is life-prolonging, but it does have repercussions that don't get talked about much.  Constant deprivation may encourage autophagy but it also raises stress hormones.  Leptin, the satiation hormone, "dries up."  After a few days, the body DOES respond to a diet of inadequate energy intake by slowing down -- but a slower metabolism not only makes our vehicle "run cooler," it also makes our brains sluggish and our systems less hardy. 

If there's no danger of triggering a PROLONGED binge simply by feasting for a short time, I suspect that that feast is good for us occasionally.  It's important not to do it "just this once" EVERY SINGLE DAY (or week), but if it's truly an unusual occurrence, the signal we send our bodies is they are not in danger of starvation, that they can afford to spend energy for heat and to fuel activity. 

*****

UPDATE:  i wrote the preceding a few days ago, but [busy busy busy] didn't manage to finish it.  Since then i've been continuing my evil ways, so the day after Christmas is going to be one of those fast-days i wrote about!

The extra carbs i've been indulging in have done nothing but stoke my appetite!  Most of the family- and restaurant-meals have been less protein-replete than i usually eat at home, too, and NOTHING affects satiation for me as well as a big chunk of beef or lamb!  On Monday we had steaks and BOY did that help....  Yesterday's stroganoff (over zucchini noodles) didn't come close to satisfying as well.

It reinforces my understanding and resolve to have experiences like this.  I'm not forgetful enough to fall for the short-term lack of nasty repercussions caused by eating things i shouldn't -- i know that i WILL suffer from unpleasant effects even if i don't feel crummy yet.  I already do notice some joint pain, and i wake up in the morning with the stuffy head that used to be the norm, but is no more.  (I won't go into details of the change of bathroom habits....)

But this once-a-year orgy IS pleasantly celebratory.  Yesterday, my daughter and i went to visit a friend, and we tasted a few favorite-family-recipe cookies at Gina's house -- we broke each one in two and shared them, and they were VERY GOOD.  :-)  Our pleasure in being naughty probably equalled the pleasure that G's mother had in receiving our compliments on her "masterpieces."

And giving and receiving pleasure and thanks are some of the best aspects of this season, aren't they? Happy continuing holidays, everyone!

ooh, he lost TWENTY POUNDS!

Or, as I entitled a blog post a few days ago -- OY ... again.

RANT ALERT

I get really tired of the over-reactions of certain individuals making a huge deal out of unremarkable accomplishments by poster-kids in the LCHF and paleo/primal world.  So-and-so lost twenty pounds, and improved his sinus and skin problems by adopting a better diet, and now has a book out about it!

You know what I think is impressive?  Karen at the Garden Girl blog, Dave the "bulletproof" guy, Terry who cured her MS, Yasmina who conquered histamine intolerance, Wooo, Sidereal, and many more who have lost LOTS of weight and kept it off, having been REALLY metabolically deranged before discovering what works for them.  People who have worked their butts off (literally and figuratively), people who have been sick and in despair, and when they learned what actually WORKS to improve health and lose burdening fat, who engaged their determination and accomplished something above and beyond. 

People who have been obese since childhood.  People who have struggled for decades, and finally triumphed.  People who were in a wheelchair, unable to hold a job, or sickening toward their deaths, but found the answer and turned their lives around.  People who ACHIEVED, and then started writing so they could share what they learned.

So when I read that Mutual Admiration Society (which the paleo/primal blogosphere can sometimes be) lauding to the skies some Johnny-come-lately who has climbed into prominence on the backs of the REAL INNOVATORS, I got a little testy.  Low-carb, whole-food dieting has been around for over a century and a half.  Paleo-diet theory has been around for about a third of that.  Why, in the names of all the gods, are we seeing praise poured out for a young, well-to-do male -- THE EASIEST DEMOGRAPHIC TO IMPROVE IN HEALTH AND BODY COMPOSITION??? 

He lost TWENTY POUNDS!  He got rid of pimples and sinus problems!  He wrote a book, containing information which has been around for years!  Whoop-whoop -- lets all get really excited about his accomplishments!

Not.  I prefer to save my admiration for those who have STRUGGLED for their place in the sun.

when is a menopause symptom NOT a menopause symptom?

...when it's actually a histamine-intolerance issue!

Estrogen irregularities set off histamine problems.  Environmental chemicals set off histamine problems.  Tyramines and salicylates set off histamine problems.

Every time I get those nasty pseudo-feverish feelings these days, I review what I ate in the past half-dozen hours.  It doesn't happen ACUTELY very often anymore because I try to be cautious in my eating.  When we visit restaurants, though, we can never be sure of what kind of additives may be put into the hamburgers or rubbed on the steaks. 

A lot of people would advocate not eating out regularly, but for some of us it isn't practical to ALWAYS cook for ourselves.  And there's only so long one can snack one's meals with cheese, boiled eggs, nuts, and dried meats; to survive an airplane flight, yes, but more than a day is inclined to drive me to ANYTHING hot and savory!  Coping strategies are in order.

If, despite how careful you are to avoid foods to which you're sensitive, you get those uncomfortable feelings in the hours after a meal, your best friend could be benedryl.  It's an antihistamine available over-the-counter in the US, but alas other countries often require a prescription I hear.  :-(  The next best thing I've found is less intuitive -- NICOTINE GUM.  It has anti-inflammatory properties as well as antihistamine ones.  I have also tried the diamine-oxidase supplement DAOSIN (it's like Histame), but compared to diphenhydramine and nicotine, it's pretty wimpy.

I heard an interesting hypothesis recently -- someone observed that though smoking rates are low here, there is no diminution of teens STARTING, and opined that they're getting a vitamin-B boost from it that they need.  I might offer a counter-suggestion -- perhaps the hormonal storms of adolescence are causing histamine reactions which are tamed by the nicotine in cigarette smoke.  I DO know that the beneficial qualities of nicotine have long been known, but they've been downplayed.  To announce a GOOD side of cigarette smoking is not going to help when you're trying to get people to STOP.  By using the gum or patch, though, you avoid the admittedly-nasty tar and toxins you get when pulling smoke into your lungs intentionally.

So when I feel the suspicious weariness or downright SLEEPINESS, or the puffy hands/feet, or the hot-flash after consuming something questionable, I reach for the benedryl or gum.  It's AMAZING how fast it helps.

oy

Ya know, I really do dislike being negative more than 10% of the time.  Unfortunately, the big virtue of having one's own blog is the opportunity to blow one's frustrations off into the cyber-void.  When one doesn't have a sympathetic audience to LISTEN to one's grinchings, the Internet Gods are there ... whether they actually LISTEN or not.  ;-)

Mark has fallen into the trap of recommending the impossible again!  How can we move from finding the holiday season stressful, to finding it more enjoyable and life-affirming?  Hint:  don't be poor, or associated with conventional family and friends, or "responsible for the happiness of others" ... and it would probably be wise to not be female, either.

In my experience, Mother is the one who finds the holidays most stressful.  Coincidentally, 40% of the population see a lot of stress and ... probably 40% of the population is that female and maternal demographic in question.  Mother usually does most of the decorating, gift-choosing and making/buying, cooking and entertaining.  She stays up late on Christmas Eve wrapping presents and filling stockings, while Dad (in a lot of houses, anyway) dozes off in his easy-chair.  She is expected to provide all the traditional goodies, at the same time as fighting to RESIST cookie-eating and eggnog-swilling, etc -- because if she "loses her figure" it's her own damn fault that her health goes down the toilet, her husband deserts her for the student-intern, society sneers at her, and she hates herself as well!

In a perfect world, there are no monetary worries and everyone will LOVE exactly what you give them for your holiday of choice.  No-calorie treats will taste exactly the same as the ones full of butter and sugar.  The string of lights will NOT go dark the minute you finish hanging them, and there will be no internet outage as your order from Amazon is being processed.  Your favorite Christmas special will be aired on the one night you don't have a delightful party to attend.

Most people don't live in that world.

As educated SAD sufferers can tell you, there are biological reasons our bodies get fatter and more lethargic in the fall and early winter.  We are DESIGNED to slow down just at the time our culture insists that we speed up, revving our brains with the resuming school year and autumnal observances....  The winter-solstice holidays are logical celebrations of the "return of light" -- not because of silly oh-my-god-the-sun-is-disappearing superstitions, but because the lengthening daylight is energizing and mental-health-promoting to those who are sensitive.  If a light-box helps you, then Christmas/Chanukkah/Diwali make PERFECT sense.  (thanks, Wooo, for all you've taught me)

So what to do to reduce seasonal stress?  Well, it's going to depend on your particular situation.  If you're a young family, you can condition your kids and spouse to have different expectations from "the norm."  If your family is reasonable, you can make a pact to simplify and share the load.  There are probably ways to ameliorate almost any difficulties, even if you can't remove them entirely.  OF COURSE you want perfection, but if you don't make yourself miserable with a sense of failure when it doesn't happen, you will be less stressed.  Do YOURSELF some kindnesses as well as all you insist on doing for others.

If any of my readers have traditionally been a more passive enjoyer of the season's pleasures, you can make everyone happier by being more proactive.  Even a patient, appreciative and cheerful attitude will be a blessing on the household! 

Happy relaxing holidays, everyone!  :-D