Not sure what to think about this one. The Japanese diet is high in starch, salt, umami (the word is even Japanese) and despite my wife’s protestations (Japanese) has a fair bit of sugar in it, but you don’t see many fat people in there, particularly in more rural areas.
Could be that it's all in the context of a high-PUFA diet? The Japanese diet is comparatively low, although growing, in PUFA. And they are more obese than they used to, though way fewer of them than us of course.
I'm currently reading "The Hungry Brain" by Stephan Guyenet, in which he talks about the flavor of food (and distraction such as eating in front of the TV, etc). He referenced a study from1965 (in the "Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences") in which obese and non-obese men had to push a button that dispensed 7.4mL of liquid food per press. It had all the nutrients necessary for life, but was bland, lacking cues, and devoid of any variety. The study found that the two lean people ate their normal amount of calories over 16 and 9 days respectively. When they did it with "grossly obese" volunteers who weighed 400 lbs, the two men ate ridiculously low calories (like under 300) a day. Ultimately, they sent home some of the grossly obese volunteers on a 400 calorie a day diet of this bland liquid. One guy went 255 days on the diet without complaining of hunger.
It's notable, since the lean people didn't gain or lose weight, and also ate an appropriate number of calories to maintain their body weight, while the obese people severely limited their diet with apparently no hunger.
Related to your marinara, perhaps you didn't lose weight because it was tasty?
I remember that study from the book. Curiously, Johnson, the guy in the videos I linked to, actually tested this - he created mice that couldn't taste the fructose and they still overate. So he concludes that it is NOT the taste/sweetness, but some metabolic effect of the fructose.
I wonder if that experiment would work today, like Tyler says, people are way more PUFA'd now. Similar to that Scottish guy who fasted for a year. Fat people these days cannot simply fast for a year. I know, I tried.
Also, I did lose 60-70lbs eating the marinara - it just stopped eventually.
I frankly don't buy Guyenet's thesis, I think he's got it all upside down.
Or maybe we just (also) have taste receptors in the stomach/gut ? Would not suprise me that the body has a backup mechanism in case the tongue receptors fail.
They were some animals studies which showed that animals can notice the mineral difference even without any other cues. For example they made sheep deficit of certain mineral (it was calcium if I remember correctly). Then they were given multiple (different) feed, one of them was high in calcium. They let the sheep to get out of deficit, then sometimes later they made them deficit again. Then they presented the same feeds, but now former high-calcium one was devoid of any calcium. The sheep still preferred that. So somehow they "learned" that for that state that particular food is good and when next time presented they choose that.
Johnson talks about something similar in the book with fructose, even mice in which they genetically knocked out any sense of taste would prefer the fructose laced drink.
So it's not just that the drink tastes sweet, it seems the sheer metabolic effect of it is enough to teach an animal to pursue it.
Meaning we don't need to be able to taste sodium or calcium or anything, and we could still be seeking it out. Very curious.
I suppose it's just a sort of "I ate X and then I felt better/happier" type of thing?
Yea, good point. Although if it's not conscious, can we even call it a "taste?" Hard to say. If you define it as "thing that makes us want to eat more of it despite no conscious taste sensation" then I'm 100% certain that exists; that's pretty much what we think linoleic acid does via the endocannabinoid system, or fructose via the pathway here.
Would be interesting to replicate this experiment in our current environment of 2.5x the seed oils. I suspect that people who were obese in 1965 have much different metabolisms than people who are obese today.
off track a little bit. However, there is allulose (?sweetener) that doesn't metabolize (much) and somehow amplifies GLP-1. What is the "purpose" of allulose in nature. I get the fructose (purpose).
Yea in the book he says that fast acting starches like white rice can still activate it. Although I was spontaneously eating less than the same + marinara sauce, and I lost weight.
So less activation? I wish we could monitor this stuff live.
The metabolic problem is surprisingly more with the chloride anion than the sodium anion (although an excess of both is bad). So, if you would take electrolytes to ease the symptoms of a sudden transition to a zero salt diet, that contains like magnesium chloride and/or potassium chloride, you would unknowingly sabotage your efforts.
Thank you so much for the info! But still, could you go into a bit more detail exactly why the chloride anion is a problem in this case, please - as in, what does it even affect in this context and how?
Well, this is learned from years of experimenting combined with science. (Only) the chloride anion is responsible for the preservative effect of salt. And so, continued and high intake of salt (ANY Western diet) will affect the gut microbiome. Also, the 'stingy' salt taste comes from the chloride anion. You can find that stingy taste also in potassium chloride and certainly in magnesium chloride. If you, e.g., substitute sodium chloride with potassium chloride you will not solve the problem, so after years of trying, I decided to drop the salt and all of its substitutions and then the real magic began (after the first weeks/months of recalibrating internal cellular elecotrolyte and fluid balances). But, as exfatloss said : some people have absolutely no problem with salt whatsoever, so drawing conclusions from general food experiments on the broader population is ... difficult.
Interesting, so "potassium" wouldn't help per se, cause it's not the potassium but the chloride part.. that chloride is painful at high enough dosage should not be surprising, lol.
After my 30 days of plain white rice, eating a highly salted rice ball in Japan literally caused me (mild) pain. It felt like I had eaten a bunch of needles. Pretty much exactly what you describe.
Are you even sure that your regular ground beef is 100% salt free ? Almost anything prepared / in packages, has salt in it or is pre-marinated these days. Look on the package, anything added should be displayed.
Haha everything is connected... I just realized that the ACV capsules I've been taking contain B vitamins, which have been linked to increased "feed efficiency" in pigs. So I look for the ones without B vitamins, and they contain.. zinc and vitamin D.
And of course all of them contain sodium diacetate, and so... sodium.
I suppose if the chloride is the problem, the sodium diacetate shouldn't necessarily be sabotaging me?
Yes, that should be no problem, but why are you taking it in capsules ? Just dilute it with water, then it does not taste so bad. Or, better yet, marinate your beef in it for 10-20 minutes (experiment, not too long or you will make it mushy). It will predigest the meat for you (so your gut can extract even more nutrients) and it tastes better. No need for baking anymore (it kills surface bacteria).
This is a great way to frame it. The polyol and uric acid switch you describe is one way the budget gets drained, since fuel is diverted into storage instead of being available to spend.
But hypervitaminosis A shows another route to the same outcome. In that case the budget is not reduced by a survival program but by toxicity, where the liver and mitochondria are impaired and less energy can be drawn out of the same intake. The end result still feels like coming up short and needing “a second job.”
So it seems like the real task is identifying all the different ways the energy budget can become insufficient, whether adaptive like the polyol pathway or pathological like vitamin A overload. Only then can we see the full map of why appetite and fat gain spiral out of control.
We ought not discount the metals in obesity status either. What people drink and what it's contaminated with could also play a huge role. Taking lithium or getting excess copper exposure are enough to cause fat accumulation without dietary changes. Magnesium and calcium also have known positive effects on metabolic health and blood sugar levels.
In my opinion fat accumulation boils down to detox pathways, as a congested liver can't process excess glucose efficiently or correctly which causes the insulin to be pushed so hard. But I do like this via negative framing, "what's taking energy away causing a shortage"
> So it seems like the real task is identifying all the different ways the energy budget can become insufficient
I think you're right. "Fuel partitioning" doesn't seem to be just 1 big switch, it's more like the combination of all the little sub-systems going a little wrong. Like the total lag or inefficiency in the metabolism.
I found this interesting study which claims to treat a root cause of overeating by fixing the duodenum lining in the intestines. Patients are all post GLP1, and so are expected to regain weight. with the treatment, they lost or remained steady for several months. Very small n but if the results pan out this could be a whole new area of research.
Jaromir from https://mct4health.blogspot.com/ thinks that a lot of the action is happening via gut bacteria, so a messed up intestinal wall could definitely influence this.
Seems like this is a medical procedure using heat to kill off the damaged intestinal wall, allowing the healthy one to grow back?
Frankly, intuitively that's what happened to me when I cut out seed oils. Digestion and acid reflux and similar things just got SO much better within weeks or months.
Maybe you don't need to use this procedure, just cut out the offending, oxidized, toxic compounds you're eating :)
This is simular to what the carnivores have been saying lately : eating lots of plant foods/ high fiber content thickens the duodenum (and so the body's own GLP-1 signalling cannot get through anymore). Eating (just) fat/meat shrinks it back (and so internally produced GLP-1 signalling starts working again as it should). Seems as this company Fractyl has found a mechanical way (heat ablating ?) for forcefully shrinking the duodenum.
From their description it doesn't necessarily sound like "expanded" and "shrinking" but more like "destroyed/defective walls" and "killing the defective cells to allow regrowth."
Maybe those are the same thing in practice, I don't know. I could also imagine that something something in plants (PUFAs?) destroys the cell walls, and cutting out the constant toxic onslaught just allows the walls to rejuvenate naturally.
That, or, maybe eating a HSHSD (high Sweet high Salt Diet = Western Diet) fosters a certain microbiome that creates this unhealthy duodenum ? Anyway, looks like we are getting closer to root causes, but not there yet. The good news is that the gut lining is replaced roughly every 3-5 days, so it should respond quickly ?
Hmmm, very interesting. Connects a few things I have been thinking about this year ...
Tried eating more sugar earlier this year and didn't see any useful outcomes.
Adjusted / emphasised my weekly 24 hour fast by considering it a 36 hour fast with a small meal after 24 hours. Fairly confident this reduced my insulin levels (no tests yet).
Injured a finger in the gym and now appear to have (very mild*) gout! Maybe triggered by the injury and higher uric acid from the sugar?? Restricting sugar intake a lot and trying to drink more liquid now.
Perhaps the fasting affected uric acid levels as well??
And I've also been considering salt intake (for separate reasons) which is something I haven't generally thought about in ~15 years of diet / health stuff.
It's VERY complicated. Sorry to hear about your maybe gout :'-(
The whole sugar thing seems to at least be ultra-specific. Nobody seems to have any positive outcomes by just adding sugar, the sugar/diet people generally tend to do extremely specific & restricted protocols like time restriction or even whole days of sugar fasting..
Sort of like if someone saw me and decided to just add heavy cream to his SAD; it would likely make things worse.
Rick Johnson is an awesome scientist! Ten years ago I read a fascinating article he co-authored in _Scientific American_, and wrote a bit about it a couple of years ago :
[In Chrome, this link takes you directly to the paragraph, but, at least for me, it takes you to the top of the article in Safari and to the bottom of the article in Firefox.]
Thanks, what's that gene? Something related to fructose? He does mention several evolutionary bottle necks that he hypothesizes made us adapt to put on enormous amounts of fat, presumably via fructose, to prepare for droughts and famines.
For me, sufficient sodium has always been an important factor in achieving satiety from a meal; otherwise, I’d keep eating without appetite just to get the sodium I need (I also drink a lot of fluids, so it’s probably related to maintaining proper hydration status. Ray Peat and Traditional Chinese Medicine link a salty taste to adrenal demand, high cortisol/adrenaline states require more sodium metabolically).
But more important than simply having high or low sodium may be the balance of sodium in relation to other minerals. There are interesting insights into the most satiating micronutrients per calorie, with potassium being the most significant, followed by calcium (1,650 mg per 2,000 kcal, which is quite high) and selenium: https://share.google/n4gsmZXJEV2u6yuup
Nowadays, it is debated that, with regard to hypertension, overeating, and other health issues, increasing potassium relative to sodium may be more important than focusing solely on sodium restriction. Modern diets are very deficient in potassium, and if potatoes are among the most satiating foods is partly due to their potassium content.
Yea Slime Mold Time Mold think this is the case. It could make sense I guess if that balances out the sodium and therefore reduces polyol pathway activation?
Yes! I think so. I haven’t really dug into the polyol pathway, but electrolyte imbalances (from chronic dehydration) are one of the reasons why keto stops working for many people, and sodium/potassium balance is key to that. Although I’m personally very critical of the whole nutrient density paradigm (I really like your perspective on that and on CICO), it’s true that when someone isn’t able to get what they need from food (e.g., energy in the case of obesity), they just keep eating. That’s why protein or specific nutrient density can be so satiating for people with deficiencies.
I struggle with severe metabolic and malabsorption issues, and for me hyperphagia is linked to nutrient needs and dehydration. I could consume a lot of calories (and gain fat), but it’s the specific micronutrients I lack that give me satiety. That probably also partly explains the link between dysbiosis and hyperphagia to some extent. Even though obesity is a whole other issue, I would argue that this nutrient-need–driven hyperphagia affects everyone. If keto were a fix for obesity, it stops being one once it creates these other problems, for example.
I found stopping the salt on my 30day animal food high fat diet to be very bland indeed. Towards the end I felt very I was psychologically bored with the foods and found it annoying. Not what I had expected at all.
Not sure if you feel this is a bad or good outcome ? I think modern food is too much 'entertainment' and too litle 'nurishment'. And so, getting bored with food is ... a good thing. Best to get your entertainment somewhere else (outside of food).
I too find that I am "less entertained" on diets that "work" in a metabolic sense. E.g. pure plain white rice tastes sort of fine when you're hungry, and becomes gross when you're satiated. With added (salty! umami!) marinara sauce or when I've recently eaten fruit/honey, the rice becomes way more "exciting."
Now I like exciting/delicious food as much as the next guy, but it seems there is definitely a point where food is too much entertainment and not just fuel.
A further complication to this is I think some people (like me on some level, sometimes) are somewhat dependent on fructose to function if other metabolic pathways are not working well. In the endurance sport space, adding fructose to their carb packs is a new innovation because the human body can use the fructose pathway to extract and consume energy as a separate independent one to increase the max amount of energy extracted per hour vs. a pure glucose one. A pure glucose one is 60g/h while the fructose pathway adds an additional 60g/h for a total of 120g/h. I wouldn't be surprised if it interacts with all of the above somehow.
Interesting. In the book Johnson mentions that fructose also activates a "stress mode" (peaters hardest hit lol) that he thinks is supposed to encourage an animal to forage for more food during starvation: higher inflammation, blood pressure, blood sugar (via insulin resistance), aggression, risk taking, etc. which might all be beneficial in athletic competitions.
PUFA must be the trigger, but how we react to it is different for everyone.
I can tell you the french love salt (bread, cheese, saucisson) but arguably fructose isn't their forte, though usually a breakfast means bread butter and jam. I think we underestimate how much genes can wreck us up in unique ways when exposed to modern food environment.
I am so curious as to how this goes, as I myself am a HUGE tomato-anything addict, lmao. I frequently eat a lot of tomatoes or use tomato pure in my stuff, as well as a healthy dosage of MSG on top to really enhance the flavours.
Still trying to figure out how I at times can lose weight effortlessly and at times I am actively trying to lose weight and nothing budges.
Right now I am back on keto and been going crazy on the cream and almonds, though ditching the almonds from tomorrow as I don't feel comfortable on them long-term, and I know I am over-eating them even well beyond satiety, so they're a no-go food for me.
Not sure what to think about this one. The Japanese diet is high in starch, salt, umami (the word is even Japanese) and despite my wife’s protestations (Japanese) has a fair bit of sugar in it, but you don’t see many fat people in there, particularly in more rural areas.
Could be that it's all in the context of a high-PUFA diet? The Japanese diet is comparatively low, although growing, in PUFA. And they are more obese than they used to, though way fewer of them than us of course.
I definitely think the transition to industrial foods and vegetable oil is taking it's toll.
I laughed out loud at "heat unit intake"!
I'm currently reading "The Hungry Brain" by Stephan Guyenet, in which he talks about the flavor of food (and distraction such as eating in front of the TV, etc). He referenced a study from1965 (in the "Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences") in which obese and non-obese men had to push a button that dispensed 7.4mL of liquid food per press. It had all the nutrients necessary for life, but was bland, lacking cues, and devoid of any variety. The study found that the two lean people ate their normal amount of calories over 16 and 9 days respectively. When they did it with "grossly obese" volunteers who weighed 400 lbs, the two men ate ridiculously low calories (like under 300) a day. Ultimately, they sent home some of the grossly obese volunteers on a 400 calorie a day diet of this bland liquid. One guy went 255 days on the diet without complaining of hunger.
It's notable, since the lean people didn't gain or lose weight, and also ate an appropriate number of calories to maintain their body weight, while the obese people severely limited their diet with apparently no hunger.
Related to your marinara, perhaps you didn't lose weight because it was tasty?
I remember that study from the book. Curiously, Johnson, the guy in the videos I linked to, actually tested this - he created mice that couldn't taste the fructose and they still overate. So he concludes that it is NOT the taste/sweetness, but some metabolic effect of the fructose.
I wonder if that experiment would work today, like Tyler says, people are way more PUFA'd now. Similar to that Scottish guy who fasted for a year. Fat people these days cannot simply fast for a year. I know, I tried.
Also, I did lose 60-70lbs eating the marinara - it just stopped eventually.
I frankly don't buy Guyenet's thesis, I think he's got it all upside down.
Or maybe we just (also) have taste receptors in the stomach/gut ? Would not suprise me that the body has a backup mechanism in case the tongue receptors fail.
They were some animals studies which showed that animals can notice the mineral difference even without any other cues. For example they made sheep deficit of certain mineral (it was calcium if I remember correctly). Then they were given multiple (different) feed, one of them was high in calcium. They let the sheep to get out of deficit, then sometimes later they made them deficit again. Then they presented the same feeds, but now former high-calcium one was devoid of any calcium. The sheep still preferred that. So somehow they "learned" that for that state that particular food is good and when next time presented they choose that.
Johnson talks about something similar in the book with fructose, even mice in which they genetically knocked out any sense of taste would prefer the fructose laced drink.
So it's not just that the drink tastes sweet, it seems the sheer metabolic effect of it is enough to teach an animal to pursue it.
Meaning we don't need to be able to taste sodium or calcium or anything, and we could still be seeking it out. Very curious.
I suppose it's just a sort of "I ate X and then I felt better/happier" type of thing?
Yea, good point. Although if it's not conscious, can we even call it a "taste?" Hard to say. If you define it as "thing that makes us want to eat more of it despite no conscious taste sensation" then I'm 100% certain that exists; that's pretty much what we think linoleic acid does via the endocannabinoid system, or fructose via the pathway here.
Also interesting because Guyenet has one of the coolest PUFA-related studies (the body tissue biopsy study)
Ah yes, the Guyenet villain arc..
Would be interesting to replicate this experiment in our current environment of 2.5x the seed oils. I suspect that people who were obese in 1965 have much different metabolisms than people who are obese today.
100%. I suspect it wouldn't work as well, similar to "just fat it off" apparently used to work and now doesn't.
off track a little bit. However, there is allulose (?sweetener) that doesn't metabolize (much) and somehow amplifies GLP-1. What is the "purpose" of allulose in nature. I get the fructose (purpose).
Brace yourself for the headaches, anxiety and (stomach and muscle) cramps.
Electrolytes (no Chloride anions !), vit c + b help somewhat.
Stopping (a high) salt (diet) has a big metabolic impact.
Well I just did a near zero salt diet for a month, pure plain white rice. Not really any issues.
Intresting, maybe your polyol pathway was still activated with the plenty carbohydrates ?
For me it was brutal the first 10 days and I come from from 15 years of Lowcarb.
Also, zero salt is surprisingly different from near zero salt.
Yea in the book he says that fast acting starches like white rice can still activate it. Although I was spontaneously eating less than the same + marinara sauce, and I lost weight.
So less activation? I wish we could monitor this stuff live.
Could you please explain why no chloride anions? (I assume it has to do with salt, but I'm curious about the details and mechanisms)
The metabolic problem is surprisingly more with the chloride anion than the sodium anion (although an excess of both is bad). So, if you would take electrolytes to ease the symptoms of a sudden transition to a zero salt diet, that contains like magnesium chloride and/or potassium chloride, you would unknowingly sabotage your efforts.
Thank you so much for the info! But still, could you go into a bit more detail exactly why the chloride anion is a problem in this case, please - as in, what does it even affect in this context and how?
Well, this is learned from years of experimenting combined with science. (Only) the chloride anion is responsible for the preservative effect of salt. And so, continued and high intake of salt (ANY Western diet) will affect the gut microbiome. Also, the 'stingy' salt taste comes from the chloride anion. You can find that stingy taste also in potassium chloride and certainly in magnesium chloride. If you, e.g., substitute sodium chloride with potassium chloride you will not solve the problem, so after years of trying, I decided to drop the salt and all of its substitutions and then the real magic began (after the first weeks/months of recalibrating internal cellular elecotrolyte and fluid balances). But, as exfatloss said : some people have absolutely no problem with salt whatsoever, so drawing conclusions from general food experiments on the broader population is ... difficult.
Interesting, so "potassium" wouldn't help per se, cause it's not the potassium but the chloride part.. that chloride is painful at high enough dosage should not be surprising, lol.
After my 30 days of plain white rice, eating a highly salted rice ball in Japan literally caused me (mild) pain. It felt like I had eaten a bunch of needles. Pretty much exactly what you describe.
Are you even sure that your regular ground beef is 100% salt free ? Almost anything prepared / in packages, has salt in it or is pre-marinated these days. Look on the package, anything added should be displayed.
Haha everything is connected... I just realized that the ACV capsules I've been taking contain B vitamins, which have been linked to increased "feed efficiency" in pigs. So I look for the ones without B vitamins, and they contain.. zinc and vitamin D.
And of course all of them contain sodium diacetate, and so... sodium.
I suppose if the chloride is the problem, the sodium diacetate shouldn't necessarily be sabotaging me?
Yes, that should be no problem, but why are you taking it in capsules ? Just dilute it with water, then it does not taste so bad. Or, better yet, marinate your beef in it for 10-20 minutes (experiment, not too long or you will make it mushy). It will predigest the meat for you (so your gut can extract even more nutrients) and it tastes better. No need for baking anymore (it kills surface bacteria).
I tried diluting it, but still got tingly teeth. Admittedly, I was taking extreme amounts. Still, seems less risky this way.
This is a great way to frame it. The polyol and uric acid switch you describe is one way the budget gets drained, since fuel is diverted into storage instead of being available to spend.
But hypervitaminosis A shows another route to the same outcome. In that case the budget is not reduced by a survival program but by toxicity, where the liver and mitochondria are impaired and less energy can be drawn out of the same intake. The end result still feels like coming up short and needing “a second job.”
So it seems like the real task is identifying all the different ways the energy budget can become insufficient, whether adaptive like the polyol pathway or pathological like vitamin A overload. Only then can we see the full map of why appetite and fat gain spiral out of control.
We ought not discount the metals in obesity status either. What people drink and what it's contaminated with could also play a huge role. Taking lithium or getting excess copper exposure are enough to cause fat accumulation without dietary changes. Magnesium and calcium also have known positive effects on metabolic health and blood sugar levels.
In my opinion fat accumulation boils down to detox pathways, as a congested liver can't process excess glucose efficiently or correctly which causes the insulin to be pushed so hard. But I do like this via negative framing, "what's taking energy away causing a shortage"
> So it seems like the real task is identifying all the different ways the energy budget can become insufficient
I think you're right. "Fuel partitioning" doesn't seem to be just 1 big switch, it's more like the combination of all the little sub-systems going a little wrong. Like the total lag or inefficiency in the metabolism.
This has got my brain churning, will probably publish a companion article to yours soon.
Death by 1000 cuts in every aspect of modern life. Food, economy, politics, relationships, logic, education
I found this interesting study which claims to treat a root cause of overeating by fixing the duodenum lining in the intestines. Patients are all post GLP1, and so are expected to regain weight. with the treatment, they lost or remained steady for several months. Very small n but if the results pan out this could be a whole new area of research.
https://ir.fractyl.com/static-files/aecf43ca-ddc9-4cac-8166-6423defe2ae1
Jaromir from https://mct4health.blogspot.com/ thinks that a lot of the action is happening via gut bacteria, so a messed up intestinal wall could definitely influence this.
Seems like this is a medical procedure using heat to kill off the damaged intestinal wall, allowing the healthy one to grow back?
Frankly, intuitively that's what happened to me when I cut out seed oils. Digestion and acid reflux and similar things just got SO much better within weeks or months.
Maybe you don't need to use this procedure, just cut out the offending, oxidized, toxic compounds you're eating :)
This is simular to what the carnivores have been saying lately : eating lots of plant foods/ high fiber content thickens the duodenum (and so the body's own GLP-1 signalling cannot get through anymore). Eating (just) fat/meat shrinks it back (and so internally produced GLP-1 signalling starts working again as it should). Seems as this company Fractyl has found a mechanical way (heat ablating ?) for forcefully shrinking the duodenum.
From their description it doesn't necessarily sound like "expanded" and "shrinking" but more like "destroyed/defective walls" and "killing the defective cells to allow regrowth."
Maybe those are the same thing in practice, I don't know. I could also imagine that something something in plants (PUFAs?) destroys the cell walls, and cutting out the constant toxic onslaught just allows the walls to rejuvenate naturally.
That, or, maybe eating a HSHSD (high Sweet high Salt Diet = Western Diet) fosters a certain microbiome that creates this unhealthy duodenum ? Anyway, looks like we are getting closer to root causes, but not there yet. The good news is that the gut lining is replaced roughly every 3-5 days, so it should respond quickly ?
That was certainly my experience; after going on ex150 my digestion turned from what I thought was quite good to next level good within 1-2 weeks
Hmmm, very interesting. Connects a few things I have been thinking about this year ...
Tried eating more sugar earlier this year and didn't see any useful outcomes.
Adjusted / emphasised my weekly 24 hour fast by considering it a 36 hour fast with a small meal after 24 hours. Fairly confident this reduced my insulin levels (no tests yet).
Injured a finger in the gym and now appear to have (very mild*) gout! Maybe triggered by the injury and higher uric acid from the sugar?? Restricting sugar intake a lot and trying to drink more liquid now.
Perhaps the fasting affected uric acid levels as well??
And I've also been considering salt intake (for separate reasons) which is something I haven't generally thought about in ~15 years of diet / health stuff.
It's complicated this health thing, isn't it! :-)
* so far ...
It's VERY complicated. Sorry to hear about your maybe gout :'-(
The whole sugar thing seems to at least be ultra-specific. Nobody seems to have any positive outcomes by just adding sugar, the sugar/diet people generally tend to do extremely specific & restricted protocols like time restriction or even whole days of sugar fasting..
Sort of like if someone saw me and decided to just add heavy cream to his SAD; it would likely make things worse.
Rick Johnson is an awesome scientist! Ten years ago I read a fascinating article he co-authored in _Scientific American_, and wrote a bit about it a couple of years ago :
https://theotherendofthegalaxy.substack.com/p/foundational-reading#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThe%20fat%20gene,well%20worth%20reading
[In Chrome, this link takes you directly to the paragraph, but, at least for me, it takes you to the top of the article in Safari and to the bottom of the article in Firefox.]
Thanks, what's that gene? Something related to fructose? He does mention several evolutionary bottle necks that he hypothesizes made us adapt to put on enormous amounts of fat, presumably via fructose, to prepare for droughts and famines.
For me, sufficient sodium has always been an important factor in achieving satiety from a meal; otherwise, I’d keep eating without appetite just to get the sodium I need (I also drink a lot of fluids, so it’s probably related to maintaining proper hydration status. Ray Peat and Traditional Chinese Medicine link a salty taste to adrenal demand, high cortisol/adrenaline states require more sodium metabolically).
But more important than simply having high or low sodium may be the balance of sodium in relation to other minerals. There are interesting insights into the most satiating micronutrients per calorie, with potassium being the most significant, followed by calcium (1,650 mg per 2,000 kcal, which is quite high) and selenium: https://share.google/n4gsmZXJEV2u6yuup
Nowadays, it is debated that, with regard to hypertension, overeating, and other health issues, increasing potassium relative to sodium may be more important than focusing solely on sodium restriction. Modern diets are very deficient in potassium, and if potatoes are among the most satiating foods is partly due to their potassium content.
Yea Slime Mold Time Mold think this is the case. It could make sense I guess if that balances out the sodium and therefore reduces polyol pathway activation?
Yes! I think so. I haven’t really dug into the polyol pathway, but electrolyte imbalances (from chronic dehydration) are one of the reasons why keto stops working for many people, and sodium/potassium balance is key to that. Although I’m personally very critical of the whole nutrient density paradigm (I really like your perspective on that and on CICO), it’s true that when someone isn’t able to get what they need from food (e.g., energy in the case of obesity), they just keep eating. That’s why protein or specific nutrient density can be so satiating for people with deficiencies.
I struggle with severe metabolic and malabsorption issues, and for me hyperphagia is linked to nutrient needs and dehydration. I could consume a lot of calories (and gain fat), but it’s the specific micronutrients I lack that give me satiety. That probably also partly explains the link between dysbiosis and hyperphagia to some extent. Even though obesity is a whole other issue, I would argue that this nutrient-need–driven hyperphagia affects everyone. If keto were a fix for obesity, it stops being one once it creates these other problems, for example.
What do you think are the problems keto creates, e.g. how does it create chronic dehydration?
I found stopping the salt on my 30day animal food high fat diet to be very bland indeed. Towards the end I felt very I was psychologically bored with the foods and found it annoying. Not what I had expected at all.
Not sure if you feel this is a bad or good outcome ? I think modern food is too much 'entertainment' and too litle 'nurishment'. And so, getting bored with food is ... a good thing. Best to get your entertainment somewhere else (outside of food).
I too find that I am "less entertained" on diets that "work" in a metabolic sense. E.g. pure plain white rice tastes sort of fine when you're hungry, and becomes gross when you're satiated. With added (salty! umami!) marinara sauce or when I've recently eaten fruit/honey, the rice becomes way more "exciting."
Now I like exciting/delicious food as much as the next guy, but it seems there is definitely a point where food is too much entertainment and not just fuel.
A further complication to this is I think some people (like me on some level, sometimes) are somewhat dependent on fructose to function if other metabolic pathways are not working well. In the endurance sport space, adding fructose to their carb packs is a new innovation because the human body can use the fructose pathway to extract and consume energy as a separate independent one to increase the max amount of energy extracted per hour vs. a pure glucose one. A pure glucose one is 60g/h while the fructose pathway adds an additional 60g/h for a total of 120g/h. I wouldn't be surprised if it interacts with all of the above somehow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXfoyz7N8EQ
Interesting. In the book Johnson mentions that fructose also activates a "stress mode" (peaters hardest hit lol) that he thinks is supposed to encourage an animal to forage for more food during starvation: higher inflammation, blood pressure, blood sugar (via insulin resistance), aggression, risk taking, etc. which might all be beneficial in athletic competitions.
Looking through my file of health quotations, I found this quote:
"Some people have no fructokinase. They don't get T2 diabetes or obesity!"
If true, that seems like a big clue. Add it to the list of obesity mysteries.
Is that so? I didn't even know these people existed. Do you remember where the quote comes from?
I did not record, and cannot find, the source; sorry.
I hear you on the tomato sauce ... if you look up a photo of a Meatball Martini, that's me (so long as the sauce is Rao's)
PUFA must be the trigger, but how we react to it is different for everyone.
I can tell you the french love salt (bread, cheese, saucisson) but arguably fructose isn't their forte, though usually a breakfast means bread butter and jam. I think we underestimate how much genes can wreck us up in unique ways when exposed to modern food environment.
I am so curious as to how this goes, as I myself am a HUGE tomato-anything addict, lmao. I frequently eat a lot of tomatoes or use tomato pure in my stuff, as well as a healthy dosage of MSG on top to really enhance the flavours.
Still trying to figure out how I at times can lose weight effortlessly and at times I am actively trying to lose weight and nothing budges.
Right now I am back on keto and been going crazy on the cream and almonds, though ditching the almonds from tomorrow as I don't feel comfortable on them long-term, and I know I am over-eating them even well beyond satiety, so they're a no-go food for me.
With plain cream I at least stop when I am full.
according the guru Gundry.....tomatoes and almonds (especially) lectins.