AHS-12 videos finally coming through!

I enjoyed the hell out of J Stanton's presentation when i saw it the other day, but i may have been wowed more when i watched Chris Masterjohn this evening

Funny thing, though, i was most interested in an early point he made -- that salivary amylase activity is predictive of glucose tolerance, and that it varies significantly from one individual to the next.  Unless i'm much mistaken, this is highly significant for choosing one's life-long dietary path.  The only problem is how to know where you stand early enough....  I wonder if this is one of those tests you can just order up on the internet?

To me it also means that all the pro-carb blow-hards who claim everybody ought to be able to shovel down potatoes as fast as they do are DEMONSTRABLY wrong.  Hee hee!  :-D

The rest of Chris's talk was not only great material, it was very well presented.  I had to back up and listen to a few points again, and i paused even more times to peruse his slides at my own pace, but he explained things so well i never actually got lost. Great job, Dr. M!

I'm so glad they "listened to me" [smirk] and provided a microphone for the questions at the end of the talks this time -- the AHS-11 q&a session drove me batty.

MY thyroid on VLC

Quite some time ago, there was a lot of noise in the paleo blogosphere about low-carbohydrate diets causing a drop in thyroid function.  I was puzzled by it, as i feel SO much better on LC.  Surely if it really DID lower function, i'd be the first to notice it!  The high-carb afficionados especially made a big deal about it.

Why do they insist so ardently that their way is the only way?  Because they hate eating that way themselves, and they don't want others to benefit from it, what?  ...Makes no sense to me.

Upon reading more from a range of sources, it turns out that ANY decent loss of weight makes the thyroid slow down -- LC is just more efficient for fat loss than most others.  It's all about energy availability in the diet -- your body is slowing down to protect you from the famine it thinks is coming.   From a subjective point of view, i didn't notice feeling worse because it obviously wasn't slowing down MUCH.  It may have been statistically significant, but those numbers they use are often arbitrarily chosen.  (Read Chris Masterjohn on statistics....)

I suspect that the lack of slowdown in MY body is all about the FIAF and the ghrelin.  One thing i DON'T feel on very-low-carb is draggy, dopey and dim -- i have to eat a "normal" amount of carbs to feel that crummy.

So if you're making good progress on LC but are worried about what it might be doing to your thyroid function, monitor yourself for energy levels and symptoms -- but remember that a lot of thyroid symptoms are tied up with nutrient deficiencies ... which may be causing your poor thyroid function in the first place!

this one's for you, kids!

Toward the beginning of this week, when my daughter and her family converged with my husband and me in SF, i heard the news that my granddaughter had recently had several cavities.  She's five years old -- this needs to stop.

I still had a few sublingual K2 tablets from my last bottle, so decided to see if the kids would be willing participants in dosing them up.  Their mother being amenable, we gave it a try, and to my surprise and delight they didn't find them "gross" ... or even "YUKKY!"  (If there's going to be a perpetual struggle, it's sometimes a better idea to conduct a guerrilla-style nutritional war....)

Where they live, there's a significant drive involved in acquiring raw or pastured milk, and so i'm resigned to the fact that it's not gonna happen.  My daughter is interested in providing superior nutrition to her family, but with their busy young lives, there are limits to how much pastured and organ-meat, obscure vegetables and alternative-carb sources are going to be utilized.  Getting vitamin K2mk4 may just depend on using a supplement.

I find it's most effective to conduct my nutritional brainwashing in small steps; even here on vacation, i managed to get my daughter to watch "FatHead" via Netflix and my laptop -- and i was pleased that my SIL seemed interested, as well.  :-)  There's a virtue in having a talented presenter like Tom Naughton helping one conduct the education!

Next, i'll try to get her to read Chris Masterjohn's exposition of the vitamin K story -- that's the reason for today's post, to make this information easily available.  After that ... hmmm, should it be Mary Enig on fats, or J Stanton on protein, or That Paleo Guy on D...?  I'm so devious!!!  (She already knows about Mark's Daily Apple as an all-purpose site -- love those definitive guides.)

So anyway, when i reorder K2mk4, i'll get one for myself and have one sent to the kids as well.  The next thing i get my daughter to read or watch might depend on any challenges the children encounter.  That's a very powerful incentive for her to make progress in her nutritional education.