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Mac's avatar
Nov 18Edited

So this is my theory of exfatloss:

1. There are a bunch of sensory processing patterns / neurodiversity vibes that I'm noticing with you.

2. Type 2 Non-24 feels like a sensory processing issue. You have a normal rhythm, but the sensory stimulus that we depend on to keep us entrained is not getting processed in your brain, and has probably since birth. As a baby, we expect them to have whack sleeping schedules, but once your not a baby anymore, you notice 3am playtimes. I'm guessing your parents probably said it 'took a long time' for you to start sleeping throughout the night. You probably also just lied there a bunch of times not falling asleep and thinking about whatever watching the shadows on the wall when you were put to bed as a young child.

3. https://www.metabolicpsychiatry.com/ is basically a lab that is demonstrating that keto fixes a lot of other mental dysfunctions. Keto fixes 'X', especially if 'X' is some sort of neurodiversity.

4. ADHD people having circadian rhythm issues is starting to be noticed as a thing: https://x.com/geneticlifehack/status/1857464038848082310?s=42

5. ADHD people are shown to process glucose differently in their brains, which connects the whole keto thing.

6. Kempner was targeting kidney function with the diet, I'm guessing there is probably also something goofy about detox pathways with the kidney and liver systems. Some sort of toxin or similar that you can't process out well -> brain goofyness.

My guess as to why potatoes didn't work well with you is potatoes have a lot of crap in them that can fuck people up, and it was fucking you up. Even when I peel my potatoes, it's rare to find a truly purely white russet potato, which makes me think there is still some solanine or whatever else laced through the potato flesh. When I do a potato diet, I don't get perfect logs #4 bowel movements like I did with a freshly baked home bread maker white bread diet or high basmati white rice diet.

People say the same things about brown rice having too much crap in it. White rice is pretty close the closest thing you can get to a pure starch without extra shit beyond an ultra-processed one, and the ultra-processed ones tend to have their own unique categories of contaminants.

Also an interesting thing that since I started adding a good chunk of fish with omega-3s, my wake up time has pretty much been around sunrise all the time, despite having black out curtains.

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

1. Are you calling me autistic? :D Get in line, my mom's been doing that for decades.

2. Yea could be. I sure learned to "look asleep" and then read for 6 hours with a flashlight under the covers :)

The potato thing probably checks out. Especially since I got weird rashes (I usually never get rashes) and was eating the skins the first week or so.

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Louise's avatar

sorry to be boring but i wouldn't write off giving up caffeine so easily. unless you already gave it up before.

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

I've had Non-24 since early childhood, decades before I started drinking coffee. That makes me think it's not the caffeine.

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Julian's avatar

even if he did, it's still possible that caffeine or high linoleic% each cause non24 individually and only the absence of both resolves it!

now that we have a negative control, i'd love to see him try different things and see what brings it back.

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

Yea I'd think it would have to be at least both of these. Maybe I'll add caffeine back in via energy drinks, hm.

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bertrand russet's avatar

this is cool, congrats. my big question is whether it's about your macronutrient distribution or about the specific foods you're consuming.

like, how much butter can you add to this diet and keep your non-24 in remission? can you have just any mixture of rice and butter, or do you have to be very heavily biased towards one or the other?

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

Good question! I should really try swamping, which I haven't done since that 2022 carbs experiment.

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Brian Moore's avatar

Nice, you can't help but like "this illness/symptoms I had have gone away!"

Do you have an omegaquant LA reading from "did carbs, still got non-24" to compare to today's "did carbs, did NOT get non-24"?

Also, I am doing some self experimentation myself, replacing the SFA "heavy cream diet" with macadamia nut milk MUFA. So far seems similar!

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

No, unfortunately I only found out about PUFAs and OmegaQuants about a year and a half ago.

Interesting, I didn't even know macadamia milk existed! I guess you're gonna find out if MUFAs are harmless or not. Brad from Fire in a Bottle thinks they're bad in combination with PUFAs.

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Brian Moore's avatar

Yeah, I read that and was basically curious about if it was “mufa bad” or only in combo. Mac nut milk is pretty close to the cream, just with mufa. The precipitating incident was I got a really high LDL and Lp(a) test and was curious if I could lower the LDL with just mufa (still no pufa)

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

I'd definitely expect your LDL to go down.

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Brian Moore's avatar

It’s only been a few weeks and it already is. Actually losing weight a bit faster than the heavy cream too. I just don’t know if that means I’m better off, cardiovascular-ly

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

Unfortunately, I'm not convinced LDL will tell you that :(

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Brian Moore's avatar

me neither, but I have a calcium score test to hopefully add some info!

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Chris's avatar

Fascinating. I suffer from this disorder and appreciate your experiments and data. I'm now strongly considering trying one of these two ways of eating to attempt to stabilize my free running circadian rhythm. Is it safe to assume that you would recommend keto for an initial attempt?

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

I've always done well on keto and loved it. That said the rice diet isn't unpleasant so far either. Maybe a few more long term considerations, but should be fine for a 30 day experiment.

I highly recommend you try either one for 30 days and see. The nice thing about Non-24 is that you only need 1 cycle to find out if it worked or not :) So in a month, you'll know.

Regarding which one to try first; which one sounds more appealing to you? Heavy cream diet or rice diet? :D

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Chris's avatar

Both sound miserable but I will trade an arm for a steady sleep schedule! I'll try keto first, since I'm already doing animal-based eating and probably have a mostly appropriate microbiome.

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

Let me know how it goes :)

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EmitteLucem's avatar

Great news you may have healed your Non-24! That would be an unexpected and excellent step on the road to being able to eat normally. Outstanding!

One caution about excessive rice consumption. Be very choosy about which rice you consume. It is frequently contaminated with cancer-causing arsenic and cadmium. Here are some links:

https://health.osu.edu/wellness/exercise-and-nutrition/how-to-reduce-arsenic-in-rice

https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2012/11/arsenic-in-your-food/index.htm#:~:text=Among%20all%20tested%20rice%2C%20the,Everyday%20Value%20Long%20Grain%20Brown.

https://nutritionfacts.org/blog/which-brands-and-sources-of-rice-have-the-least-arsenic/

They recommend Lundberg Basmati, but this consumer advocate just found arsenic and cadmium in it as well: https://tamararubin.com/2024/10/lundberg-family-farms-organic-basmati-rice/

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

Ha I'm using Lundberg Jasmine right now. Dang that sounds pretty bad! Lundberg has testing results for arsenic on their website and they seem to be "relatively low." But weird that there seems to be no way around it, all rice is just poisoned, just unclear how much? Some of those are even recommending you don't eat rice.

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EmitteLucem's avatar

Yes. I think we are about to find out that it's not just PUFAs that are poisoning us. I would recommend soaking rice and draining the water, then cooking per usual. That should remove at least some of the bad stuff. They eat all kinds of toxic mushrooms in E. Europe safely after doing so.

TFW it's the arsenic and cadmium that are fixing your non-24... :-)

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Big Mike's avatar

I’ll be very interested to see your dexa results!

In the meantime, how have your energy levels been? Does it feel a bit different having full glycogen stores?

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

Energy and stuff is... almost the same! I feel a little bloated all day long and have to eat 6-7 meals a day. Otherwise, I feel totally normal.

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John Lawrence Aspden's avatar

I'm curious about this too, I certainly notice not having glycogen when I keto.

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

My muscles look way bigger. I notice it in my biceps :D Looks way pumped up.

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John Lawrence Aspden's avatar

This is really wonderful, that's a serious disorder you've fixed there! I know someone with non-24, despite having a very understanding employer he always looks *completely* frazzled.

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

Yea I had that all throughout high school. I thought people telling you "Wow, you look like shit, did you sleep?!" was just normal.

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james's avatar

When was the last time you went without caffeine? Would be interesting to keep everything else the same and add back caffeine to see if the effect lasts

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

A long time ago, I don't even remember if it was within the last 9 keto years or before.

You're right, would be an interesting experiment to add it back.

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John Lawrence Aspden's avatar

I'm also interested in this. I think you can get caffeine in pill form....

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

Or you could just chug energy drinks. Hypothetically.

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Charlotte Malmberg's avatar

What types of potatoes did you eat? Sweet potatoes or white potatoes. If the former it might be Vitamin A assuming Grant Genereux is right. Rice has no Vitamin A, while at least sweet potatoes does.

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

No sweet potatoes. I think "normal" (white?) potatoes and the tiny purple ones.

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Dylan Shumway's avatar

I know you've looked into your cortisol but that's what this reads as to me. I don't have non-24 but I've had terrible sleep hygiene my whole life and spend my whole life in front of blue screens, but since cutting PUFA and moving to majority carb carolies I find myself getting sleepy around 8-9 and waking up bright and early and rested, unless I have stimulants. To me it feels very related to the relaxed/sleepy feeling I get eating some sugary treats on the couch.

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

I've had the Non-24 since childhood, before I even had a screen of any sort. So not sure that'd be it. I also just don't see any sign of the cortisol. I've done pretty extensive testing, including a 4 spot saliva test throughout the day.

I could see having been PUFA'd from birth, though, as most people probably are today :'-(

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John Lawrence Aspden's avatar

Still good?

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

Ridiculously so. Added massive amounts of energy drinks back about a week ago. Woke up (without alarm) around 7:30am today.

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John Lawrence Aspden's avatar

Excellent! So happy! This matters.

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

Even though it's day 28 now, it still hasn't "sunk in" heh. So weird.

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MarkZeroOne's avatar

Exciting results—congratulations!

I think I’m more interested in your caffeine experiment than the rice aspect, honestly! I’m not super familiar with Non-24, but isn’t caffeine a factor? It’s a compound known to disrupt sleep, especially if consumed in excess. Personally, quitting caffeine has been harder for me than giving up any other dietary habit. And I don’t even drink much—just 12–16 ounces of cold brew a day. I didn’t experience physical withdrawal symptoms like headaches, but the mood effects were significant and lasted for weeks.

I looked up more about the Kempner Rice Diet, and most sources refer to it as a “low-calorie diet” of about 1,200 calories per day. I wonder if the weight loss associated with the diet is primarily due to the low calorie intake. I think I saw on X that you mentioned eating about the same amount as you did on EX150. So, is that over 10 cups of rice per day (if my math is correct)? How are you splitting that into meals?

Anecdotally, I have a friend of Pakistani descent who eats a rice-heavy diet of about 1,000 calories per day (roughly 5 cups of rice). He wasn’t following any special diet—rice was just the base of his meals. He’s of normal weight (5’9”, 160 lbs), but he recently got a DEXA scan, and his body fat percentage was shockingly high at 30%. I encouraged him to try a low-carb diet, and he ended up losing about 10 lbs in a few of months.

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

I've had the Non-24 since early childhood, whereas I only started drinking coffee in my late 20s. So it was absolutely, definitely there decades before I ever started regular caffeine intake.

Giving up coffee for me was pretty trivial. I had 1 day of very mild headache, and 2 day of medium severity headache (took 2 Advil). Then, nothing. Ever since, I don't even really miss it that much. And I was coming off like 72oz of cold brew a day + energy drinks :)

Couldn't say that I've noticed much in terms of mood change, either.

Yea that is a good question re. Kempner. Kempner himself certainly seems to have believed it was the caloric restriction. But if that's the only reason it works, I'm not that interested, as it would be an unsustainable/temporary loss. Not a root cause fix. But I do have hopes for it actually helping with the root cause, just due to its low fat nature. Which could help with PUFA depletion.

It's about 6-7 cups of rice per day (around 130-140g dry rice each). I eat each as an individual meal.

By my math, 5 "rice cups" of rice a day would be around 2,500kcal.

Interesting about your friend.

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MarkZeroOne's avatar

I used ChatGPT to do the cals to cups math on rice. So it might be getting confused about dry vs cooked or something. But he told me 1000kcal or rice a day.

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

I don't trust the LLMs with math. Too many times people cite that, and then the quoted study is 20x off from what the LLM "reported" (=hallucinated)

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Kevin Lawrence's avatar

"I am not Brad" like that.

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

Have you seen his recipes?! My recipes go like this:

1. Turn up heat

2. Put pan on stove

3. Butter

4. Meat

5. Wait until delicious

6. Add tomato sauce

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Tadrinth's avatar

Can you clarify exactly what you were eating on this diet? You mentioned marinara sauce, was that... On the rice? Not my usual rice condiment.

Do you think soy sauce would interfere with the benefits here? Because I don't sleep well and it's at least partially a circadian rhythm issue, and my partner loves rice with soy sauce.

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

1. White rice (tried jasmine/basmati/sushi so far) cooked in a rice cooker

2. Some frozen vegetables (e.g. spinach, chopped onions, vegetable mix) microwaved and on top

3. Add marinara sauce to taste (which ends up being quite a bit!) I use Whole Foods Fat Free Marinara sauce, which I was using even before this.

Not sure about the soy sauce, maybe depends on how much you use. I'm using a lot of marinara just cause each meal is almost a pound of rice. If you added soy sauce like I add marinara, I'd be worried. If it's just a sprinkle each meal.. probably fine?

What sort of circadian issues are you experiencing?

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Drossophilia's avatar

Also, to what extent have you cheated on the diet? Or have you stuck to it straight the whole time? Do you eat any amount of sugar?

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

Haven't cheated. The only sugar I'm eating would be coming from the tomato sauce (just from the tomato, no added sugar) and I've used 2 jars of salsa in total on the diet so far. The salsa claims to have no sugar in the ingredients, but it tastes a lot sweeter than just tomato sauce.

Oh and I drink flavored sparkling water, which has a small amount of sugar per can I believe.

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Drossophilia's avatar

About how many cups of vegetables are you using per day/meal? Mixed vegetables, so corn, carrots, green beans, peas?

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

I only use the vegetables for about 2 meals a day (out of 6-7 meals typically). I always use tomato sauce. Enough tomato sauce to cover 1 cup (~350-400g cooked) rice with, so quite a bit.

For vegetables themselves, much less, maybe 1 cup a day total. Usually I use spinach, turnip greens, and fajita mix which has onions and carrots too. Maybe bell peppers. One time I used a mix that had some corn and peas in it. Have used green beans a few times but they don't go that well with rice, somehow.

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Tadrinth's avatar

I used to have a hard time going to bed on time. I started taking 200 micrograms (not milligrams!) of melatonin at ~9:30 and that dramatically helped with my ability to go to bed at my target of 1:30 AM.

However, I also have difficulty getting my brain to shut down enough to actually sleep through the night. I sleep for a bit, then I wake up a bunch of times. Sometimes, if I sleep well past when i would normally get up, I can get some really good deep sleep in, and getting up when I'm supposed to is usually very hard. I have an ADHD diagnosis, the meds I am on don't help with this particular issue but also don't make it worse.

Supplementing magnesium helped for a bit, but only for a bit. Nothing prescribed for sleep has done quite what I want.

So I take a lot of naps. Including naps at like, 8 PM. The urge to nap after dinner has been especially bad lately.

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

Sounds like you also have some sort of sleep condition. ADHD is very commonly co-diagnosed with circadian rhythm disorders. Not sure if one causes the other or common root cause.

From what you describe I'd say it could be DSPS (delayed sleep phase syndrome == extreme night owl) or the one where your circadian rhythm is just very weak, and you're never really tired enough to stay asleep long, but then also never really awake cause you didn't sleep.

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Drossophilia's avatar

I would also like to know the exact details here.

One thing I notice is that rice has noticeable deficiencies of some other nutrients, like sodium, potassium, and calcium. Are you adding those in from something else? Are you using enriched white rice that has vitamins added?

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

No I'm purposefully using non-enriched rice cause I don't trust fortification, heh.

I don't add anything except some frozen vegetables and marinara sauce. The latter has some sodium for sure.

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Nattie's avatar

Pretty cool and interesting results! Beware thiamine deficiency as a nearly-all-white-rice diet is known to cause it (second paragraph, first sentence of Wikipedia for thiamine deficiency).

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

I checked it out, apparently the half life of thiamine is 17 days. So in 30 days I'd go down to around 25% of my liver storage. Hopefully I'll be fine! I plan on doing meat again for at least a bit after this 30 day experiment.

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