One of the problems with observational studies just occurred to me, after reading a couple of articles about "the obesity problem" -- people who don't want to face what modern foods do to us grab at straws of conceivable "causation" and waste a SHITLOAD of professional time exploring absolute nonsense.
...Like "food reward." While ignoring the PHYSICALLY addictive properties of grains and sugars. Significant difference.
...Like demonizing "high-fat" foods such as the large McDonalds' combos ... without observing that they're MUCH higher in carbs than fats.
People believe what they want to believe, no matter how much data piles up that their ideas don't pan out in real life. This is why obese people who don't *like* low-carbing insist that carbohydrates are necessary -- they love their "fix" too much to abstain long enough to kick the habit, i.e. find out how much better they'll feel without it.
I feel that this is the cogent bit about the microbiome hypothesis of obesity. Yes, sick people have sick intestines. Yes, children born via C-section are more likely to be one of those people. Yes, swapping gut-bugs between fat, sick people and lean, healthy people makes an impact on the wellbeing of both types.
But I think of the microbiome as just another red herring. What lurks in your colon depends ENTIRELY upon what YOU, as an adult, have ingested. Get a candida overgrowth after a single high-carb day? It's because of what foods, drinks, and antibiotics YOU took in, sometime in your history.
Modern-day African hunter-gatherers with great health have an entirely different set of "bugs" in their poop than the average American? WHY THE BLOODY HELL SHOULD THAT BE ANY SURPRISE TO ANYONE? I'll bet the most perfectly healthy American ALSO has an entirely different set of "bugs" from the Africans'. The latter got their mothers' bugs at birth, never took antibiotics, drink non-tap-water, eat tubers grown in entirely different soils having entirely-different bacteria in them....
Red herring. Too many variables. Inconclusive.
WHAT people eat is the important part. Diet composition sets the stage for EVERYTHING that comes after. Eat things that feed bad gut-bugs and you'll have bad gut-bugs. Eat an all-meat diet and the bugs that love sugar will languish. IF you eat an all-meat diet, you don't NEED the bugs that a fibre-eater REQUIRES. Why try to cultivate them? They're COMPLETELY SUPERFLUOUS.
We of the "western world" too often think we should be able to do/have/eat anything we want. FREEDOM!TM ya know? That's just plain stoopid. This is like the lactose-intolerant insisting on the "right" to drink milk, or celiacs demanding their share of the wheat supply without the repercussions. Ought we ALL to think we should be able to drink alcohol, despite the existence of people who haven't the enzymes to metabolize it properly, and despite the existence of alcoholics?
Many people -- many many MANY -- simply behave like spoiled children. If we can't eat our cake and have it too, it's NOT FAIR. Sorry, but biology doesn't work like that.
If your biology calls for a low-carb Paleolithic diet and what you *want* is the SAD, you can whine and deny all you like, but your genotype will win every argument, every single time. Trying to find a loophole -- chasing the "perfect" microbiome might distract you for awhile; you might even improve a little for awhile; but it's NOT going to solve all your problems because it is very unlikely to be the main thing wrong with your physiology.
Amen!
ReplyDelete:-) thank you, Jill!
DeleteTess, you are spot on. Everyone who is still alive in my family (a very few of us who haven't succumbed to stroke and heart disease) are completely and totally carbohydrate intolerant (we can tolerate dairy). Three of us are very low carb or all meat and this seems to help. Sure we can whine about it all year but that's the reality. We either stick to the this diet or die young. That's our only choice. However, at least we researched and know what our problem is, whereas many millions do not.
ReplyDeleteThanks, H! I think one of the main reasons i fall into rant-mode from time to time is that people who really want and need answers are constantly led down these rabbit-holes. Authority figures, whom they SHOULD be able to trust, not only tell them to do the wrong things, they dissuade them from doing those things that are PROVEN to help. I tell ya, every time i read how someone's doctor said they MUST NOT go low-carb or give up wheat, it brings out the berserker in me....
DeleteA most excellent post. I've been eating Primal for 6 months. I've lost over 100 pounds and I feel fantastic
ReplyDeleteThank you, Lori, and CONGRATULATIONS! You've done an amazing and difficult thing! Do you read the Garden Girl blog? She's really the queen of "keeping it off"....
DeleteThe information about the importance of a gut flora issue looks very interesting and promising till the point when you start guessing even only theoretically about possible candidate for a perfect fecal transplant. How many problem-free people do you see around? Sure, there are people who can eat potatoes and even drink coke without getting fat, but how healthy are they especially as time goes by? I think skipping starchy and sugary foods is a rather easy fix , and you just solve your problem , not changing your health package for somebody else's. I suspect for a long time that many naturally thin people have a pathology of a subcutaneous fat tissue which acts as a buffer, they often develop cardiovascular and metabolic conditions earlier in life, age faster, have anxieties.
ReplyDeleteI don't really think there's any doubt about the microbiome CONTRIBUTING to weight variations, but that we can hack it into optimization ... i'd bet against that! Certain really-sick people can surely be helped by killing off the bad stuff and re-populating the gut with some better ones. If they go back to eating crapinabag, though, i'm sure they'll end up where they started again.
DeleteSure, there are serious conditions when a fecal implant is the cure, but what about the situation when somebody just doesn't tolerate carbohydrates well? I keep in mind that a"balanced" diet is harder to follow without loosing that balance than just skipping problematic choices..
DeleteI remember the story Sid mentioned in one of her comment about a mother who was treated when sick with her teen doter transplant, got well , but also got fat, while the doter was just on a chubby side.
Very interesting -- that illustrates how much youth influences our fat-storage, doesn't it? What we can get away with in our teens and twenties is just too much for our middle-aged bodies ... and it looks like our microbiome cooperates there, too. What's only mildly fat-promoting to the young is SIGNIFICANTLY fat-promoting later on.
Delete"Your geneotype will win every argument" I want to put that on one of my scenic photos a put it on instagram and pinterest. Indeed. I suspect that many times after large losses, a vacation or two and going back to the SAD changes many a gut flora. Back to the cravings and the gut bacteria that thrived with the extra weight.
ReplyDeleteThe concept is so simple- stay off processed foods. The WW culture combined with the addictive processed foods- that's a lot harder to overcome. You have to think, observe, experiment, change things.
Oh, and thanks for the shout out for my blog. I really hope that more people talk about their successes- long term with paleo-ish and Primal living. So simple in concept (yes it does take work to cook and clean up, but I happily trade that for binge free, painfree, and a normal body weight) Kudos to Lori Anne Goddess
You're most welcome! Obviously, even for people who succeed in losing weight, the battle isn't over -- the forces that made us gain are still out there (or IN there...). Voices of experience on how to succeed with BOTH are important, and the way you've organized your message impresses me greatly. "What works" vs "what didn't work" provides a corrective to the conventional (failed) message promoted by people with no experience with either issue!
DeleteI think you're bang-on right about staying off today's processed foods, and cooking more ourselves. J and i eat out a lot, and even when we try to order nothing but "the right things" it's difficult to keep the bad-actors out of our diets. We both lose better -- and i especially FEEL better -- when eating our own home-cooked stuff ... because there are a lot of hidden offenders in commercial kitchens. I can feel it (malaise or downright pain) when i've had excess sugars, gluten or histamines, and that very rarely happens at home. I'm very lucky that J likes to cook; if i don't feel like making the dinner, he's always willing to.