Re: Has weight loss improved my BGs?

[Trawley Trash]

On 7 Apr 2012 22:57:54 GMT
Chris Malcolm <c...@holyrood.ed.ac.uk> wrote:

> I've recently posted about lowering carbs a bit, esp of course the
> higher GI ones, in order to restart my stalled slow weight loss
> programme. I've also made a special point of reducing my wheat intake
> from not much to hardly any.
>
> Having lost another half stone and had to move up to the next hole in
> my trouser belts the time has come to review my general BG behaviour,
> i.e. not just spot checks but graphs of my entire BG responses to some
> standard meals and snacks. That will take some time, but some obvious
> trends have already become visible.
>
> My post meal BG peaks seem to be occurring slightly earlier, and to be
> around 10 points lower. The fall from the peak seems to be a bit
> faster. I also seem to have become more sensitive to BGs -- 130ish now
> gives me the same kind of feelings I used to get at around 140ish. So
> the "area under the BG curve" is now less than it used to be. It will
> be interesting to see if this is reflected in a lower A1C when my
> latest blood tests results come back.

This is comparable to what I have been seeing. Gradual dietary
changes beginning with wheat, then milk, then all grains are leading
me toward a paleo diet. My rule is avoid all grasses, and the milk
of any animal that eats them. A recent ELISA allergy blood test
suggests avoiding legumes, and this has also helped reduce BG. These
are also absent in the paleo diet.

Here are some more references to add to the ones I have previously
posted:

http://resources.metapress.com/pdf-preview.axd?code=h7628r66r0552222&size=largest
http://www.staffanlindeberg.com/DiabetesStudy.html

Here is an entertaining mass market introduction to paleo:

http://robbwolf.com/

I do not accept the derivation of the paleo diet; it seems to be
based on Darwinism rather than evolution. There never was a time
when humans were adapted to one particular diet. There were isolated
populations that adapted more-or-less to the local flora and fauna.
One thing I reject is the exclusion of legumes. They grow wild,
they can be eaten raw, and they are delicious. There is no way
our paleo ancestors would have refused to eat them.

Going over the results of my blood allergy test revealed something
interesting about this. I am not allergic to *all* legumes, but
only the most common ones: phaseolus vulgarus (black, kidney, pinto,
and green beans), phaseolus linnaeus (Lima beans), arachis hypogeae
(peanut), and to pisum sativum (peas).

If you look those up, you will find that the phaseolus and arachis
genuses are cultivars of American native legumes, and peas are native
to the Mediterranean area. Other beans such as mung beans and soy are
cultivars of native Asian species.

One other place where my diet differs from paleo is that starchy root
vegetables such as potatoes seem to be fine. However the oils used to
cook or dress them make a big difference.

So my suggestion would be that if restricting wheat helps you, then
you might try a full blown paleo diet for a few weeks. There is a
lot of help available for this diet.

[Wesley Richardson]

>    http://resources.metapress.com/pdf-preview.axd?code=h7628r66r0552222&...

In my opinion, Paleo is far less about strict compliance than about
education and experimentation. Legumes may not affect everyone. Some
people have worse reactions to nuts. The point is you buy in to full
paleo for a month. Then you see how you look, feel and perform
(usually far better than you were before). Then people all have their
own add-ons/ or experiments. Reintroduce legumes, how do you look,
feel and perform after a month? What happens if you take out nuts?
what happens when you only have a dairy cheat meal once a week rather
than a complete reintroduction?

Always using some sort of baseline as your measure, you understand why
you are doing certain things and what is best for most people, but
paleo basics only get you 90% of the way there. the rest depends on
your genetics, your goals, and your desire to comply.

Maybe legumes don't affect you from a gut irritant perspective. There
are other negatives, though. Just off the top of my head I know they
can raise estrogen levels. Many doctors advise female clients at times
to eat more bread in order to reduce estrogen levels. Not eating soy
and legumes may have the same effect. Males have some estrogen, but
maybe the elevated levels can lead to some issues.

As with all food, it has positives and negatives. Variety,
experimentation, and education with science and biology as a baseline
is the way to go. Feel free to use your flavor of the paleo diet as it
works best for you.

[Doug Freyburger]

Wesley Richardson wrote:

> Trawley Trash <tr...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> Chris Malcolm <c...@holyrood.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>>   I do not accept the derivation of the paleo diet; it seems to be
>>   based on Darwinism rather than evolution.

Darwinism is evolution so your statement doesn't make much sense.

>> There never was a time
>>   when humans were adapted to one particular diet.

True within limits. It takes about five million years to specialize
into a tight niche. The longest our ancestors stayed in a niche was 1-2
million years. Evolve walking onto the prarie. Evolve nose and salt
tolerance on the shoreline. Evolve as hunter gatherers over much or
Africa and Eurasia. That gives us prinples that will work for plenty of
people and it's the best guess we have available.

>>  There were isolated
>>   populations that adapted more-or-less to the local flora and fauna.
>>   One thing I reject is the exclusion of legumes.  They grow wild,
>>   they can be eaten raw, and they are delicious.  There is no way
>>   our paleo ancestors would have refused to eat them.

Some paleo systems allow legumes some don't. If I understand correctly
they tend to allow fresh beans but not dried beans. Our ancestors would
have ignored dried beans as nearly stone.

>>   Going over the results of my blood allergy test revealed something
>>   interesting about this.  I am not allergic to *all* legumes, but
>>   only the most common ones:  phaseolus vulgarus (black, kidney, pinto,
>>   and green beans), phaseolus linnaeus (Lima beans), arachis hypogeae
>>   (peanut), and to pisum sativum (peas).

It's also a matter of small issues eventually blooming to big results.
I'll offer an example out of trace mineras that should parallel. My
brother talked my parents into taking colliodal suspension trace
minerals. Before starting they were in good health for their age.
After taking the minerals for a year it was like they had dropped a
decade. Mom was walking around seeing the sights on vacations like she
hadn't for longer than that. While none of us could point to any
one specific symptom we could all see the change in total. The minerals
resolved one or more previously undetected deficiency.

The suggestion of paleo plans is that since a lot of people are allergic
to legumes or nightshades there is little down side in avoiding them.
it is possible they are causing small symptoms below the level of
detection. Add a bunch of such issues together and the net result can
be as amazing as what happened with my parents using colloidal trace
minerals. And you don't know until you're tried it. There's the bingo
- You have tried it. You have the data for yourself.

>>   So my suggestion would be that if restricting wheat helps you, then
>>   you might try a full blown paleo diet for a few weeks.  There is a
>>   lot of help available for this diet.

I learned of my wheat intolerance doing the challenge and eliminate
system that is a part of the entire instructions for Atkins. I followed
the entire instructions in the book not some magazine article
abbreviation.

Then I read Neanderthin by Ray Audette and tried eliminate and challenge
with legumes and nightshades.

> In my opinion, Paleo is far less about strict compliance than about
> education and experimentation. Legumes may not affect everyone. Some
> people have worse reactions to nuts. The point is you buy in to full
> paleo for a month. Then you see how you look, feel and perform
> (usually far better than you were before). Then people all have their
> own add-ons/ or experiments. Reintroduce legumes, how do you look,
> feel and perform after a month? What happens if you take out nuts?
> what happens when you only have a dairy cheat meal once a week rather
> than a complete reintroduction?

Start strict then follow the instructions on schedule as instructed.
Exactly. Thing is doing that is beyond the ken of many. They want to
skip the non-obvious parts or stay strict or make it up own their own or
whatever. Because having a month in the plan means they know better
than an author who spent a decade puzzling out the bits that are not
obvious. Such is life with dieters.

[Trawley Trash]

On Fri, 20 Apr 2012 17:13:19 +0000 (UTC)
Doug Freyburger <dfre...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Start strict then follow the instructions on schedule as instructed.
> Exactly.

Whose instructions? I started this thirty years ago, and I have
forgotten where I found the rules about elimination diets.

> Thing is doing that is beyond the ken of many. They want to
> skip the non-obvious parts or stay strict or make it up own their own
> or whatever. Because having a month in the plan means they know
> better than an author who spent a decade puzzling out the bits that
> are not obvious. Such is life with dieters.

This thread started out in alt.support.diabetes. I cross posted here,
because my blood glucose (BG) measurements pointed to my allergies.
Allergy tests and elimination diets pointed toward paleolithic diet.
Then I noticed there is a newsgroup for that, and it seemed kind
of empty.

The problem I have had with elimination diets, is that my symptoms are
a bit vague. It is hard to be sure when I have a problem, or where
exactly the problem comes from. Then I was diagnosed with diabetes.
I found my BG measurements were an accurate indication of my diet.
Particularly any kind of milk product drives my blood sugar crazy.
Gluten grains also caused a problem. Then I took an ELISA blood
allergy test which pointed to legumes and eggs. When I eliminated
legumes and drastically reduced eggs, my BG dropped into the normal
range.

So now I am a cave man. But my version of paleo allows nightshades.
With all the other restrictions, I don't know what I would do without
potatoes.

[Doug Freyburger]

Trawley Trash wrote:
> Doug Freyburger <dfre...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Start strict then follow the instructions on schedule as instructed.
>> Exactly.
>
> Whose instructions? I started this thirty years ago, and I have
> forgotten where I found the rules about elimination diets.

The directions for your favorite diet plan. In this context your
favorite paleolithic diet plan. When I started mine was the Atkins
book. More a general principle than specific to your situation unless
you do intend to reboot.

> This thread started out in alt.support.diabetes. I cross posted here,
> because my blood glucose (BG) measurements pointed to my allergies.
> Allergy tests and elimination diets pointed toward paleolithic diet.
> Then I noticed there is a newsgroup for that, and it seemed kind
> of empty.

Very empty. I watch it because of the resemblence between paleo and
what the Atkins process leads so many to.

> The problem I have had with elimination diets, is that my symptoms are
> a bit vague. It is hard to be sure when I have a problem, or where
> exactly the problem comes from.

That's unfortunately how food intolerances work.

Occasionally you'll find an intolerance that's easy to detect. I went
wheat free for months then tried a flour based gravy because adding
back grain was in the directions. Bam sweaty scalp, elevated body
temperature, indigstion and so on. I never quite noticed the that
wheat went away just that I felt better but when I added the wheat
back it was obvious.

Other times it is much more subtle. I tried sorbitol fake candy and the
next day I cheated on real sugar candy. Because ti was a day later it
had to happen three times in three years before I added the two together
and started avoiding sugar alcohols. Sugar alcohols weren't something I
had very enough anyways. Someone told me I eat robotically when there
is popcorn in front of me so I concluded that corn is a risky food for
me. I am now hesitant to eat corn chips and I only touch popcorn when I
expect to be able to empty the container so only movies where the small
really is small. The popcorn thing is subconscious so I might never
have noticed it without someone else telling me.

> Then I was diagnosed with diabetes.
> I found my BG measurements were an accurate indication of my diet.
> Particularly any kind of milk product drives my blood sugar crazy.
> Gluten grains also caused a problem. Then I took an ELISA blood
> allergy test which pointed to legumes and eggs. When I eliminated
> legumes and drastically reduced eggs, my BG dropped into the normal
> range.

I'm lucky that I do okay with any grain but wheat (for me wheat includes
spelt, kamut, triticale as well as regular hard and soft wheats). So
once I locate a brand of rye bread that is all rye and no wheat I can
eat it and buy more of it.

I'm also lucky that I do okay with dairy. As much as I love cheese I
don't get the point of milk that has not been processed into the better
stuff. I've read that people develop lactose intolerance as they age so
it's possible I now have it but since the only dairy I have is butter,
yogurt, cheese and so on I would not know.

> So now I am a cave man. But my version of paleo allows nightshades.
> With all the other restrictions, I don't know what I would do without
> potatoes.

If you're a starch hound there's rice (especially brown) and corn.
Neither is paleo but that's a part of the "start strict" topic at the
top. Work with the restrictions early on then gradually go beyond the
limits of the plan over a period of year.

Generally root veggies are allowed on paleo. Turnip, rutabaga, carrot,
beet, parsnip, jicama and so on are all root veggies that do work in
place of potatoes to some extent. In Europe before ships to the
Americas they are what was available (except jicama which is also
American).

As long as you have gone a few weeks without nightshades at some point
and added them back without effect you should be fine with spuds.

[Trawley Trash]

On Sun, 22 Apr 2012 17:42:12 +0000 (UTC)
Doug Freyburger <dfre...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Trawley Trash wrote:
> > Doug Freyburger <dfre...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Start strict then follow the instructions on schedule as
> >> instructed. Exactly.
> >
> > Whose instructions? I started this thirty years ago, and I have
> > forgotten where I found the rules about elimination diets.
>
> The directions for your favorite diet plan. In this context your
> favorite paleolithic diet plan. When I started mine was the Atkins
> book. More a general principle than specific to your situation unless
> you do intend to reboot.
>
> > This thread started out in alt.support.diabetes. I cross posted
> > here, because my blood glucose (BG) measurements pointed to my
> > allergies. Allergy tests and elimination diets pointed toward
> > paleolithic diet. Then I noticed there is a newsgroup for that, and
> > it seemed kind of empty.
>
> Very empty. I watch it because of the resemblence between paleo and
> what the Atkins process leads so many to.

I am not familiar with the Atkins diet, but I have seen similar diets.
They go back more than a century. The variations I have seen are the
Air Force diet, and the drinking man's diet. I do lose weight on
such diets, but the weight I lose is all muscle. The fat remains
behind, and I develop a putrid body odor that will not wash off.

I read a book on the paleo diet in the late 1970s. At the time I
rejected it, because it seemed to call for too much meat. The
evolutionary arguments were technically unsound. The author seemed
to confound evolution with Darwinism.

I have never been a follower of Atkins or paleo. The emphasis in
Atkins is low carb and weight loss. What paleo says is that many
modern foods make us ill. They make us ill regardless of whether we
are overweight or not. The logic behind it is technical, and it is
based on a detailed understanding of evolution.

Looking at the sample Atkins menus on

http://www.everythingatkins.net/samplemenus.html

I see foods that would mean disaster for me. Things like
cheese (dairy), cured pork (nitrates),
ranch dressing (msg+dairy), diet cola (ugh!), green beens (a legume).
The list goes on and on. There are so many problems that I would never
get to a healthy diet from here.

I have found that I lose weight on a paleo diet. I lose weight
without trying hard, because the metabolic problems that my food
allergies cause go away.

> > The problem I have had with elimination diets, is that my
> > symptoms are a bit vague. It is hard to be sure when I have a
> > problem, or where exactly the problem comes from.
>
> That's unfortunately how food intolerances work.

Yes, and I do not see any way that Atkins will help you find food
intolerances to dairy and legumes. With grains it may be helpful.

> Occasionally you'll find an intolerance that's easy to detect. I went
> wheat free for months then tried a flour based gravy because adding
> back grain was in the directions. Bam sweaty scalp, elevated body
> temperature, indigstion and so on. I never quite noticed the that
> wheat went away just that I felt better but when I added the wheat
> back it was obvious.

The problem is multiple allergies to common foods. These are not
easy to detect. It takes a very
special and highly restricted diet to find those.

> Other times it is much more subtle. I tried sorbitol fake candy and
> the next day I cheated on real sugar candy. Because ti was a day
> later it had to happen three times in three years before I added the
> two together and started avoiding sugar alcohols. Sugar alcohols
> weren't something I had very enough anyways.

Real sugar or fake make no difference. Candy is bad for you
either way. Modern processed foods are designed to trigger
our taste buds and create cravings. Food can and should taste
good, but taste does not help us choose among processed foods
(which includes all candy).

> Someone told me I eat
> robotically when there is popcorn in front of me so I concluded that
> corn is a risky food for me. I am now hesitant to eat corn chips and
> I only touch popcorn when I expect to be able to empty the container
> so only movies where the small really is small. The popcorn thing is
> subconscious so I might never have noticed it without someone else
> telling me.

I had the same problem, and I did not realize that I was allergic
to corn until I began eating gluten-free bread that contained it.
Popcorn is mostly air so the amount I ate was not noticeable.
When I eat popcorn every day for a week, then I can notice it.

> > Then I was diagnosed with diabetes.
> > I found my BG measurements were an accurate indication of my diet.
> > Particularly any kind of milk product drives my blood sugar crazy.
> > Gluten grains also caused a problem. Then I took an ELISA blood
> > allergy test which pointed to legumes and eggs. When I eliminated
> > legumes and drastically reduced eggs, my BG dropped into the
> > normal range.
>
> I'm lucky that I do okay with any grain but wheat (for me wheat
> includes spelt, kamut, triticale as well as regular hard and soft
> wheats). So once I locate a brand of rye bread that is all rye and
> no wheat I can eat it and buy more of it.

Allergies are reactions to specific proteins contained in food. These
proteins are specified in the DNA of the plants or animals.
Evolution causes a series of changes to one protein at a time. These
changes can be traced into tree structures called clades. Spelt,
kamut, and so on are all part of a clade which share nearly all of
the same proteins. It is the clade which contains these grains
that you are allergic to.

There may well be a larger clade containing wheat, barley, and rye
that you are also allergic to. One larger clade contains the
additional grains rice and corn. If indeed you are allergic to corn
(as your robotic munching might indicate) then you are probably
allergic to *all* of those grains *as* *I* *am*.

> I'm also lucky that I do okay with dairy.

You mean you haven't noticed any problem with dairy yet.
You probably will. Diary animals eat grain, and those
proteins are passed on in the milk. It is after all food
for baby cows.

> As much as I love cheese I
> don't get the point of milk that has not been processed into the
> better stuff. I've read that people develop lactose intolerance as
> they age so it's possible I now have it but since the only dairy I
> have is butter, yogurt, cheese and so on I would not know.

The *only* problem I have with dairy (including cheese) is diabetes.
I never noticed it until I was diagnosed and began using
a blood glucose meter.

> > So now I am a cave man. But my version of paleo allows
> > nightshades. With all the other restrictions, I don't know what I
> > would do without potatoes.
>
> If you're a starch hound there's rice (especially brown) and corn.
> Neither is paleo but that's a part of the "start strict" topic at the
> top. Work with the restrictions early on then gradually go beyond the
> limits of the plan over a period of year.

Rice and corn both make me ill. That is *why* I am paleo.

> Generally root veggies are allowed on paleo. Turnip, rutabaga,
> carrot, beet, parsnip, jicama and so on are all root veggies that do
> work in place of potatoes to some extent. In Europe before ships to
> the Americas they are what was available (except jicama which is also
> American).

Turnips, OK. I eat those, but I think I need to cook them to
actually get carbs out of them. I don't know any good recipes.

Not sure what a rutabaga is. Apparently a cross between cabbage
and turnip. Some cultures say it is a turnip.

Carrot is a recent introduction. Most of the botanical relatives are
poisonous: most notably poison hemlock. Cave men did not eat them.

I hate beets. They are too sweet. Maybe there is some variety
of beet that I would like. It looks like they require high levels
of boron, and so they only grow near seas.

So I am left wondering what a Eurasian paleo man could have eaten
prior to new world contact.

> As long as you have gone a few weeks without nightshades at some point
> and added them back without effect you should be fine with spuds.

I am unable to think of anything I could use as a substitute that
did not come from the Americas. Anyway potatoes come clean in every
challenge and test. At one point I put myself on a potato
and coffee diet, and I felt better. One clue about food allergies
is to go on a fast. If you feel better when you are starving, then
something you eat is making you ill. Whatever my problems are, potatoes
are not one of them.

The issue of Atkins versus Paleo is a topic for heated debate. I
began picking up on this recently when I ran into someone I used
to see a lot, but he has vanished from our gym. I was in Walmart
buying diabetic test strips, and I mentioned my weird diet that has
reversed my diabetes. He asked me if it was anything like paleo,
and except for legumes it was. He said that he joined another
gym that emphasized the paleo diet.

It was not long after that when I took an ELISA allergy test that
measures antibody levels in the blood. Many common legumes were
right off the top of the scale. After I took those out of my diet,
my blood sugar dropped another fifteen points.



So then I was back thinking about paleo, and it does not necessarily
mean high meat consumption. I went to the web page for the gym,
and I saw heated debate between advocates of Atkins and Paleo.
It looks as though they saved the organization by praticing
Atkins and calling it paleo.



Perhaps I will start a new thread on this when my thoughts have

settled some more.

[Doug Freyburger]

Trawley Trash wrote:
> Doug Freyburger <dfre...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Trawley Trash wrote:
>> > Doug Freyburger <dfre...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> I watch it because of the resemblence between paleo and
>> what the Atkins process leads so many to.
>
> I am not familiar with the Atkins diet, but I have seen similar diets.
> They go back more than a century. The variations I have seen are the
> Air Force diet, and the drinking man's diet.

My post is mostly technical details at this point.

Atkins is a process not based on menus. It is a combination of using
carbs as a tool to drive loss on one hand and an eliminate and challenge
system to find food intolerances on the other hand. You appear to be
using sources similar to magazine articles for it not the books.

> I do lose weight on
> such diets, but the weight I lose is all muscle. The fat remains
> behind

High fat low carb plans spare lean better than any of the other methods.

> and I develop a putrid body odor that will not wash off.

The ketone smell of a successful predator diet fades rapidly after about
two weeks. This says you did not complete the initial two weeks. That
equals not trying.

> I read a book on the paleo diet in the late 1970s. At the time I
> rejected it, because it seemed to call for too much meat.

I am not sure why you object to eating meat on the order of half of
total bulk gradually reducing to half of total calories. If your
objection is based on religion or politics I don't need to understand I
just need to support. If your objection is based on health notions they
are based on false initial premises.

> The
> evolutionary arguments were technically unsound. The author seemed
> to confound evolution with Darwinism.

Since Darwinism defines evolution I continue to miss your point here.

The evolutionary argument in favor of paleo plans are weak but they work
as well as the arguments that favor most other types of diet plans. It
takes about five million years to evole into a fixed niche. The longest
our ancestors in the last 5 million years have remained in a niche is
1-2 million years. That's not enough to create an optimal diet but it
is enough to establish some dietary parameters. Our ancestors were
plains scavengers gradually evolving into hunters for 1-2 million years.
That means low carb vegitables, roots and nuts came to be favored over
fruits and the healthy percentage of calories form meat increased.
Then our ancestors started spreading acoss the globe being hunter
gatherers in many eco zones for 1-2 million years further increasing the
benefit of a higher percentage of calories from animal sources. With
other millions of years not included. The result is a lot more vague
than "feed grass to that bison" but it does remain better than "tns of
people gain weight on low fat therefore everyone go low fat".

> I have never been a follower of Atkins or paleo. The emphasis in
> Atkins is low carb and weight loss. What paleo says is that many
> modern foods make us ill. They make us ill regardless of whether we
> are overweight or not. The logic behind it is technical, and it is
> based on a detailed understanding of evolution.

So many people think you need to understand a plan for it to work. One
of the best feautres of science is it works whether you understand it or
not, believe it or not. Plans either work for an individual or they do
not so determine experimentally and learn as you try plan after plan.

> Looking at the sample Atkins menus on
> http://www.everythingatkins.net/samplemenus.html
> I see foods that would mean disaster for me. Things like
> cheese (dairy), cured pork (nitrates),
> ranch dressing (msg+dairy), diet cola (ugh!), green beens (a legume).
> The list goes on and on. There are so many problems that I would never
> get to a healthy diet from here.

Atkins is not a menu based system. There are lists of foods to use as a
starting point for the elimination half and as a starting point for the
carb counting half. The menus are for people who can't absorb a
principle to save their lives.

If you know some of your problem foods at the start don't include them.
With Atkins the typical starting point is a best guess based on results
from the masses and then move on systematically. You are correct that
it starts out with both eggs and dairy and does not mention a way to
figure out if either of those is a problem. They ar ethe loophole.

Green beans is an interesting technicality. The toxic substances are
supposed to build up as they ripen. Green beans are legumes in the
sense of growing on that type of plant, not legumes in the sense of not
yet being dried and not yet having toxins. This is why Atkins lists
fresh green beans among its low carb veggies - No toxins yet.

> I have found that I lose weight on a paleo diet. I lose weight
> without trying hard, because the metabolic problems that my food
> allergies cause go away.

That's a cmplete slam dunk for you. It's the ultimate way to select a
plan. All of the rest is dickering.

> Yes, and I do not see any way that Atkins will help you find food
> intolerances to dairy and legumes. With grains it may be helpful.

With dairy and eggs per the green bean discussion above.

> The problem is multiple allergies to common foods. These are not
> easy to detect. It takes a very
> special and highly restricted diet to find those.

The "Texas Elimination Diet" is the one I've seen recommended for when
more generous eliminate and challenge systems have failed to find the
sources of the problems. It's extremely restrictive and very slow to
extend the list of foods available.

>> > Then I was diagnosed with diabetes.
>> > I found my BG measurements were an accurate indication of my diet.
>> > Particularly any kind of milk product drives my blood sugar crazy.
>> > Gluten grains also caused a problem. Then I took an ELISA blood
>> > allergy test which pointed to legumes and eggs. When I eliminated
>> > legumes and drastically reduced eggs, my BG dropped into the
>> > normal range.
>>
>> I'm lucky that I do okay with any grain but wheat (for me wheat
>> includes spelt, kamut, triticale as well as regular hard and soft
>> wheats). So once I locate a brand of rye bread that is all rye and
>> no wheat I can eat it and buy more of it.
>
> Allergies are reactions to specific proteins contained in food.

Intolerance more generally rather than allergy more specifically. At
times the two terms are used interchangibly. Most of the time that does
not matter. Discussing eliminate and challenge processes it starts to
matter. We look for both and allergies are far easier to detect.

> These
> proteins are specified in the DNA of the plants or animals.
> Evolution causes a series of changes to one protein at a time. These
> changes can be traced into tree structures called clades. Spelt,
> kamut, and so on are all part of a clade which share nearly all of
> the same proteins. It is the clade which contains these grains
> that you are allergic to.

I call it a wheat intolerance.

> There may well be a larger clade containing wheat, barley, and rye
> that you are also allergic to.

Plus oats and einkorn for the list of gluten bearing grains. I happen
to not react to the non-wheat gluten bearing grains.

> One larger clade contains the
> additional grains rice and corn. If indeed you are allergic to corn
> (as your robotic munching might indicate) then you are probably
> allergic to *all* of those grains *as* *I* *am*.

I definitely do better if I avoid both wheat and corn. The other grains
are to me carby junk with little other problem that I have detected so
far. That is to say carb gram for carb gram I appear to do no
differently with rice or potatoes.

Your suggestion that I should try going free of cereal grains again is a
good one. To see if there are other health changes that come back when
I reintroduce them, changes I did not detect the previous cycle. The
impact of wheat was so obvious I may have expected obvious differences.

>> I'm also lucky that I do okay with dairy.
>
> You mean you haven't noticed any problem with dairy yet.
> You probably will. Diary animals eat grain, and those
> proteins are passed on in the milk. It is after all food
> for baby cows.

And baby sheep, goats and water buffalo depending on the cheese in
question.

> Turnips, OK. I eat those, but I think I need to cook them to
> actually get carbs out of them. I don't know any good recipes.

In American and European culture we now treat potatoes the way turnips
were treated before Columbus brought spuds to western civilization.
Other than the fact that turnips are good as fine strings raw in salads
where potatoes are not, most potato applications work fine with turnips
instead.

> Not sure what a rutabaga is. Apparently a cross between cabbage
> and turnip. Some cultures say it is a turnip.

Looks like a white turnip that has been colored yellow/beige. Larger
and denser than white turnips. Flavor is stronger but very similar to
turnip. Duck is to goose as white turnip is to rutabagas. Lamb is to
goat as white turnip is to rutabagas. Some cultures say it is swede.
Unfortunately there exist local linguistic variations that also call
white turnips swedes.

> Carrot is a recent introduction. Most of the botanical relatives are
> poisonous: most notably poison hemlock. Cave men did not eat them.

Thanks for the training.

> I hate beets. They are too sweet. Maybe there is some variety
> of beet that I would like. It looks like they require high levels
> of boron, and so they only grow near seas.

I like beet strings raw in salads. When cooked I might or might not
bother removing them from my food - Mild dislike. In comparison I can
hardly enter a house where parsnips are boiling I dislike them soi
strongly.

> So I am left wondering what a Eurasian paleo man could have eaten
> prior to new world contact.

Multiple root veggies in place of potatoes. Mostly turnips and beets.

> Anyway potatoes come clean in every
> challenge and test. At one point I put myself on a potato
> and coffee diet, and I felt better.

That's hard data on your own reactions. That type of hard data beats
every type menu based plan. The best process based plans ar intended to
help you discover such hard data.

> The issue of Atkins versus Paleo is a topic for heated debate.

Most of which is PR nonsense that ends up wrong when you look into it.
Atkins had a lot of negative PR aimed at him whne he was alive and it
continued after he died. Doesn't matter in the long run. He remains
right for far more people than the PR ever admits.

> I
> began picking up on this recently when I ran into someone I used
> to see a lot, but he has vanished from our gym. I was in Walmart
> buying diabetic test strips, and I mentioned my weird diet that has
> reversed my diabetes. He asked me if it was anything like paleo,
> and except for legumes it was. He said that he joined another
> gym that emphasized the paleo diet.
>

> So then I was back thinking about paleo, and it does not necessarily
> mean high meat consumption. I went to the web page for the gym,
> and I saw heated debate between advocates of Atkins and Paleo.
> It looks as though they saved the organization by praticing
> Atkins and calling it paleo.

With exceptions you have pointed out above - dairy, eggs and the
confusion of what consistutes legumes - there is a vast overlap between
the two. Core Atkins process emphasises natural foods from the outer
ring of the grocery store, same as paleo. Core Atkins starts out
restrictive then moves less so, same as paleo. Core Atkins counts carbs
and controls them as a sort of throttle to trigger fat loss, unlike

paleo.

> Perhaps I will start a new thread on this when my thoughts have
> settled some more.

I lok forward.

[Trawley Trash]

On Tue, 24 Apr 2012 22:57:25 -0700
Trawley Trash <tr...@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> Carrot is a recent introduction. Most of the botanical relatives
> are poisonous: most notably poison hemlock. Cave men did not eat
> them.

That is not right. The book I remember reading was talking about
carrots being a recent (ie Elizabethan) introduction into England.
Carrots (or possibly parsnips) are mentioned by ancient Greek and
Roman writers, although the colors were different. So carrots
are paleo.

Carrots are related to poison hemlock and to other similar species
like fools parsnip. I have been told that even carrots are
poisonous in their second year when they go to seed. I am not
sure whether that is true, or whether it is just that they so much
resemble poisonous species. Anyway never eat anything that looks
like it might be a wild carrot.

[Trawley Trash]

On Fri, 20 Apr 2012 06:14:46 -0700 (PDT)
Wesley Richardson <w.richa...@gmail.com> wrote:

> In my opinion, Paleo is far less about strict compliance than about
> education and experimentation. Legumes may not affect everyone. Some
> people have worse reactions to nuts. The point is you buy in to full
> paleo for a month. Then you see how you look, feel and perform
> (usually far better than you were before). Then people all have their
> own add-ons/ or experiments. Reintroduce legumes, how do you look,
> feel and perform after a month? What happens if you take out nuts?
> what happens when you only have a dairy cheat meal once a week rather
> than a complete reintroduction?

Exactly. Although I think once you have the right diet for you, you
will not want cheat days.

What I use is to measure my reaction is
my blood glucose (BG). Dr. Lindeberg has done quite a bit of research
in Kitava and also in Sweden. He found that Kitavans do not suffer
from diabetes or other autoimmune diseases. Kitavans who move away
and adopt a western diet do get them. One of Lindeberg's experiments
involved returning these patients to their traditional diet. They
all improved. He tried similar changes in Sweden and again found
that Swedes improved when they adopted his version of the paleo diet.
Populations that avoid western diseases have BGs in the low 80s.
That is where my target is.

This whole paleo business began with a gastroenterologist named
Voegtlin. He wrote a book called "The Stone Age Diet" that was
self-published in 1975. His theory of evolution is antiquated,
and some of his conclusions are wrong. But he noted the same
thing about the Inuit people in Canada. They suffer from
cancer due to smoke inhalation, but other than than that they
are healthy.

Here are two cultures that do *not* suffer from diabetes (high BG).
What do they have in common?

Another interesting fact is that diabetes incidence varies widely
around the world. Most Western countries run around 10 percent.
In Vietnam the diabetes rate has been far lower at 2.5% as indicated
by glucose tolerance tests administered in 1990. These rates are
rising rapidly today. This same trend coinciding with western
influence has been noted in many other countries.

These facts gives clues as to what a healthy paleo diet
should look like.

I did not start by trying to do a paleolithic diet. I began with the
question of whether my longstanding allergies may have been the cause
of my diabetes. After an allergy test show high reactions to common
legumes, and my dietary changes confirmed lower BG, at that point I
realized that had converged on a form of paleolithic diet.

> Always using some sort of baseline as your measure, you understand why
> you are doing certain things and what is best for most people, but
> paleo basics only get you 90% of the way there. the rest depends on
> your genetics, your goals, and your desire to comply.

Well yes, but I am not convinced we totally understand the paleo
diet yet. There are interesting differences between various
authorities, and even the environment of paleolithic man is
still in dispute.

Recently several lines of thought have converged on a shore
based paleolithic existence. Sand and water are logical places for
early humans without shoes and having problems bearing their
weight vertically. In "Survival of the Fattest" Stephen Cunnane
argues convincingly that a diet of fish and shellfish was necessary
for our large brains to evolve. He points out that still today
iodine deficiency is endemic to inland parts of the world. It is
only the introduction of iodized salt that allows us to stay
healthy far away from the seacoasts.

There is little evidence for this to be found in paleontology, but
there may be good reasons for it. The earliest tools were likely
made of driftwood: stone tools came later. The seacoasts themselves
have shifted up and down in response to repeated glacial/interglacial
cycles. The bulk of any fossil evidence would lie under
water.

> Maybe legumes don't affect you from a gut irritant perspective. There
> are other negatives, though. Just off the top of my head I know they
> can raise estrogen levels. Many doctors advise female clients at times
> to eat more bread in order to reduce estrogen levels. Not eating soy
> and legumes may have the same effect. Males have some estrogen, but
> maybe the elevated levels can lead to some issues.

I have given up soy since I wrote the original post due to exactly
these concerns. I still use fermented GF soy sauce as flavoring.

Although my peripheral neuropathy is almost completely reversed,
I was left with serious muscular atrophy: especially in my
calves and feet. High protein consumption is necessary to rebuild
these muscles. Since I can't eat dairy, legumes, or eggs the only
thing left is meat. So I have gone back to eating meat provided
it is of good quality. This has been ongoing on since June, and the
results have been very good. I think it is only the milk of anything
that eats grass that I need to avoid. The meat is OK.

> As with all food, it has positives and negatives. Variety,
> experimentation, and education with science and biology as a baseline
> is the way to go. Feel free to use your flavor of the paleo diet as it
> works best for you.

I think there is still some undiscovered science here, and I am
working on understanding it.

[Trawley Trash]

The subject line says it all.

[ishmale]

On Wed, 13 Feb 2013 20:31:01 -0800, Trawley Trash wrote:

> The subject line says it all.

Still needed, because the carbohydrate-addicted trolls keep on pushing
their diabetes-inducing carbs.

There is no evidence that paleolithic man ever ate anything other than
fat meat.