Sunday, February 24, 2013

the "metabolic advantage" everybody has looked for?

...Well, except for the CICO-apologists.  ;-)

One of my link-following adventures led me to THIS paper, which led to THIS magazine article, which i can't read in its entirety for less than thirty bucks....  :-P  Aw well, such is life.  The abstract probably says the important stuff.  (It's got enough acronyms in it -- Kindke might find it worth interpreting for me if he gets bored sometime!)

Bile acids induce energy expenditure by promoting intracellular thyroid hormone activation.
Watanabe M, Houten SM, Mataki C, Christoffolete MA, Kim BW, Sato H, Messaddeq N, Harney JW, Ezaki O, Kodama T, Schoonjans K, Bianco AC, Auwerx J.
Source
Institut de Génétique et Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire, CNRS/INSERM/ULP, 1 Rue Laurent Fries, 67404 Illkirch, France.
Abstract
While bile acids (BAs) have long been known to be essential in dietary lipid absorption and cholesterol catabolism, in recent years an important role for BAs as signalling molecules has emerged. ...  Here we show that the administration of BAs to mice increases energy expenditure in brown adipose tissue, preventing obesity and resistance to insulin. This novel metabolic effect of BAs is critically dependent on induction of the cyclic-AMP-dependent thyroid hormone activating enzyme type 2 iodothyronine deiodinase (D2) because it is lost in D2-/- mice. Treatment of brown adipocytes and human skeletal myocytes with BA increases D2 activity and oxygen consumption.  ...  In both rodents and humans, the most thermogenically important tissues are specifically targeted by this mechanism because they coexpress D2 and TGR5. The BA-TGR5-cAMP-D2 signalling pathway is therefore a crucial mechanism for fine-tuning energy homeostasis that can be targeted to improve metabolic control.

It looks to me as though this may be the secret of the success of Dr. Donaldson's fatty-meat diet, and possibly the Shangri-La (oil-bibbing branch) as well -- it's all about fats which prompt a squirt of bile for our bodies to process.  I was "promised" a boost from coconut oil which i never observed to benefit me (although i love the stuff and intend to keep using it generously); this could be the big secret.  Coconut oil doesn't require bile for digestion.

It turns out, then, that the fat IN THE MEAT of the Strong Medicine regimen is the trick -- and modern science tells us why.  Donaldson clearly stated that dietary fat was important, as he had learned from Vilhjalmur Stefansson (all-lean-meat diet = BAD).  As a matter of fact, his suggestion was that if you choose to eat a leaner kind of meat than his recommendations, you should buy extra SUET and chop/grind it into your choice to make it appropriately balanced.  As an interesting aside, he observed that most of his patients adapted to a fat-burning metabolism in about five days.  Also, his only recommended exercise (except for special stretching for certain conditions) was a daily half-hour walk.

So forget the low-fat diet (as if we haven't already)!  Put the coconut oil on the back burner!  We've already forgotten heavy exercise and calorie-counting.  To lose fat weight and increase our energy, what we need is enough fuel to convince our bodies they can afford to rev up a bit ... and the best fuel of all is good old-fashioned animal fat.

Sure sounds like a LCHF metabolic advantage to me.

16 comments:

  1. All you need to know about fats by Mary G. Enig, PhD and Sally Fallon

    "Fats from animal and vegetable sources provide a concentrated source of energy in the diet; they also provide the building blocks for cell membranes and a variety of hormones and hormone like substances. Fats as part of a meal slow down absorption so that we can go longer without feeling hungry. In addition, they act as carriers for important fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K. Dietary fats are needed for the conversion of carotene to vitamin A, for mineral absorption and for a host of other processes.
    Politically Correct Nutrition is based on the assumption that we should reduce our intake of fats, particularly saturated fats from animal sources. Fats from animal sources also contain cholesterol, presented as the twin villain of the civilized diet"

    This is a must read item for anyone interested in a fats and a healthy diet.

    http://www.westonaprice.org/know-your-fats/skinny-on-fats

    Kind regards Eddie

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    1. i don't have that book, but i have "Eat Fat Lose Fat" and the "Nourishing Traditions" cookbook -- brilliant stuff!

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  2. Tess the bile acid stuff is complicated ( just like everything else in physiology ) ive seen and quoted that paper several times.

    nterestingly, a recent metabolomics study identified bile acids as the most elevated metabolites in human sera after an oral glucose challenge in patients with normal glucose tolerance, but this response was blunted in patients with impaired glucose tolerance (40). Serum bile acid levels have become biomarkers for diagnosis of liver diseases, diabetes, and obesity.

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3265867/

    The reduced serum bile acids after a glucose load *could* be the reason some people cant tolerate glucose and fatten easily from it.

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    1. that's interesting indeed. i tried to see if i originally found that study through your blog by googling "Kindke and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16437098" but it didn't work -- guess i should have put in the study's keywords....

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  3. Yay fat!
    I've always thought chicken breasts were overpriced. Chicken thighs/wings FTW :)

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  4. i think you've got a point there -- the success of chicken in the late twentieth century has been a triumph in marketing. when most of the american population lived on farms i believe that they only only baked/stewed chicken when they had a "spent" laying hen, and only fried chicken when their flock was so numerous they had superfluous cockerels.

    when i was a kid (the '60s) people seemed to eat chicken more seldom; pound for pound, it's NOT cheap compared with beef. chicken breast was something of a luxury item (hence its price) -- people didn't get whole bags of it frozen like now, but bought a whole chicken and cut it up themselves -- and white-meat chicken salad was something you made for fancy get-togethers with "the girls".... :-)

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    1. When I was young, chicken were 50% more expensive than meat, and only whole chicken were sold, most of the time with head, feet and all intestinal organs in place. Most desirable part was a leg, breast was considered to be too dry. I usually removed breast meat , kept it in a freezer to be made into chicken patties later. With added sauteed in a butter onion and some soaked in milk old bread chicken patties were not dry at all.

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    2. if only the quality were as good as it used to be, i'd celebrate the availability of chicken by the part -- it's great to buy a cheap package of backs and wings to make stock out of!

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  5. Cook the chicken in an oven bag, breast down, and it won't be dry. If you want a nice presentation, cut the bag open, flip the chicken over, and baste it with balsamic vinegar during the last 15 minutes of roasting.

    Or just cook it in a pressure cooker.

    What I'm wondering is why so many paleo/LC recipes still call for boneless, skinless chicken breast. It's the toughest, dryest, most expensive part of the bird. Besides, what about eating the whole animal and eating fat?

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    1. it's the difficulty with finding pastured chickens, in my book -- grassfed beef and even pork is easier to come by, here! conventional chicken dark meat and skin has an abundance of omega6 that is questionable to me. :-( it's like farmed fish.... if you're going to eat conventionally-raised meat, buying it lean and then adding GOOD fats to it is my ideal. i'm partial to turkey breast medallions with green-peppercorn/cream sauce, or chicken salad made with my own mayo....

      :-) interesting that you roast birds upside down -- i've done that for years, too! they self-baste that way. they're not as pretty, but i don't care.

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    2. I find labeling on poultry products to be by far the most confusing – free range, omega3-enriched, organic, vegetarian-fed, pastured, etc.

      The Egg Cornucopia report was pretty enlightening – Tl;dr: we’re screwed when it comes to chickens and eggs in their opinion. But I like your suggestion of buying it lean and adding “GOOD” fats. Eg, from grass-fed cattle, which is easier to find around here (NJ)(still haven't found a local source for raw grass-fed milk though).

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    3. :-) it makes me mad afresh when i read "vegetarian-fed" on egg cartons ... since chickens (and ducks, etc) are naturally omnivores! i suspect all the labels could be interchanged with no falsehood, and that they just label with a catch-phrase to make their product more attractive to a different group of buyers. give the chickens a handful of flaxseed with their corn and soy, and open the door to the dirt-floored pen outside and voila -- omega3-enhanced, vegetarian, free-range eggs! :-P

      i can't take credit for the butter/cream/tallow-enriched lean meats -- could have been Mark Sisson in addition to Donaldson who recommends that practice....

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  6. Hi Tess

    Me and the boys thought you could do with a brotherly hug. Keep up your good work, you are a star.

    Kind regards Eddie x

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    1. :-) you and the boys are great guys -- thanks, Eddie!

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  7. Hi Tess,

    Interesting post; thanks.

    Donaldson’s recommendation of 5 days is the shortest I’ve heard – how do you think that fares against others like Phinney, who says 3 weeks? (better safe than sorry? I usually tell people who are experimenting with keto to stick it out for at least 3 weeks and make sure they’re eating enough [fat])

    On another note, +1 for the bile acid UDCA… as long as it doesn’t come from Chinese bear bile farms :/

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    1. thanks, Bill! i suspect that Donaldson's patients may have been less metabolically messed-up than some of the people we see these days. i "blame" bad pre-birth environment for the abundance of childhood extreme-obesity we see today for example, and that influence has been growing since WWII! of course, to completely keto-adapt as for athletic performance it surely takes longer than to simply get your brain and muscles functioning adequately on fat as a fuel....

      CHINESE BEAR BILE FARMS??? :-O

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