Month: March 2013

Better Balance and Gums From Flaxseed Oil

Seth Roberts12 Comments

When I took flaxseed oil capsules for reasons connected with the Shangri-La Diet, I noticed, to my surprise, that my balance improved. The next time I saw my dentist, he told me that my gums were much better. A reader of this blog named Chuck Currie has noticed the same things.

I ran across a reference to your book again which led me to your website. And, like I said, from there to Mark Sisson and all the rest.

I had already ran across information about flax oil and cholesterol and heart health. So I started taking two tablespoons a day [of flaxseed oil] – morning and night. I noticed my balance improvement while doing yoga, but thought it was due to practice. After reading several paleo blogs, I switched to fish oil – one table spoon a day in the morning. Then after reading some other studies regarding possible negative effects of over-consumption of fish oil, I stopped that also.

During this time I really became a strict paleo/primal eater and exerciser. No carbs other than leafy greens and non-starchy vegs. No more chronic cardio. Stopped swimming due to shoulder issues. Started using kettlebells and body weight tabata exercise. Went back and forth on supplementation. My weight dropped to below 120. [He’s 5 feet 8 inches tall.]

I was getting totally confused on what was legit and what was BS. Sure I lost weight, but I must have looked sick because people were asking if I was all right. I think they thought I had cancer or AIDS. I felt great though. No more 2 o’clock naps and I slept great. Then I read Kurt Harris’s 2.0 blog and that set me straight – and straight back to your blog.

It made me think, OK what works on the individual level, not the hypothesis level. I had also noticed that my balance had deteriorated (I thought it was because I stopped doing yoga) and my gums were bleeding again – I had forgotten that they had stopped bleeding. [After he switched from flaxseed oil to fish oil, his balance slowly got worse.] Sort of back to basics. Sun, lots of it, or D3 – 10,000 units (I am sitting in the sun as I type this on my iPhone). Omega 3 – your posts about flax oil made sense – [sudden release of short-chain omega-3 causes] slow release [of long-chain omega-3] – and is more sustainable than cold water fish and fish oil. Magnesium at night for better sleep and muscle cramps. (when I first went full paleo, I suffered from terrible leg cramps during the night until I found magnesium). And extra butter – beyond cooking with it.

I tested the flax/balance question by continuing to not practice yoga or any other balancing exercises and [measure my balance] just using my ability to wash my feet in the shower without leaning against the wall – which had been my normal habit before my first improvement and then again when it went away. After about a week – perfect balance – both washing and drying my feet. Also, no gum bleeding. So as some would say, “the shit works”.

[He added later:] I can definitely say, with a high degree of confidence, that my balance is not as good when taking fish oil as it is when taking flax oil. Fish oil does provide a small improvement over not supplementing any omega-3. But the big improvement comes with flax oil.

Make Yourself Healthy: Diverticulitis

Seth Roberts3 Comments

You have diverticulitis when “diverticula in your digestive tract become inflamed or infected. Diverticula are small, bulging pouches.” A man in his forties named Tuck had a serious case:

In my twenties I got really sick; lying in bed for 5 days, bleeding from the lower part of my digestive tract: not pretty. . . Delirious days later and ten pounds lighter and I was recovered, except for one problem: I had diarrhea for the subsequent 14 years. . . . Two years ago [2008] I passed out on the toilet on a ski weekend. The emergency room at Bennington Hospital [Vermont] told me it was a stomach flu.

Four weeks later I got cramps at work. I had to lie on the floor until it passed. Then I drove to my doctor’s office, and he told me that I had diverticulitis, and I had to go to the emergency room. I drove myself, and barely made it. I was in agony; I nearly passed out again while they were interviewing me to see if it was “serious”. . . . I had a perforated colon. . . . I spent the next four days in the pre-operative ward, so if it got worse they could cut me open immediately. I lost 10 pounds. Then I started bleeding, and I realized these were all the same symptoms that I had had 14 years before. My blood pressure got so low that the automated blood-pressure machine wouldn’t work . . .

I mentioned to all three of the doctors I saw that I had had constant diarrhea for the last 14 years, since the first attack, and they shrugged. They told me to eat more fiber, and whole wheat, even though that was what I had been eating for the last 20 years. So I avoided surgery, started eating salad with salad dressing (containing industrial seed oils) and lots of whole wheat. . . . But the more salad and whole wheat I ate, the worse it got. I couldn’t understand why. Finally had to have eight inches of my colon removed. The diarrhea continued, so obviously the cause remained.

Then something happened that, before blogging, wasn’t possible:

Someone sent me a post that Stephen Guyenet did about how dental problems were pretty much all due to diet, not genetics, as I’d been told. As someone who’d had a ton of cavities, and 8 teeth pulled, and was determined to spare his daughters the same fate, I found this of interest.

I started reading the blog. 6 months later, I decided to stop eating seed oils, which eliminated my carb cravings, hence no wheat. Two days later, [unexpectedly] my diarrhea stopped. A good bit of trial and error, some accidental, ensued. [I learned that both] wheat and seed oils cause distress, but different types. The two combined can cause me to pass out. If I eat wheat by accident, then eating saturated animal fats (like cream) causes things to settle down.

He found that “traditional” oils (palm, coconut, olive) are okay. Industrial oils (corn, canola, cottonseed) are not. Animal fats (butter, lard, beef tallow) are best.

After 16 years my symptoms are now completely under my control. . . . I read the ingredients on everything. I make a big mistake once every 6-9 months. [Other benefits:] I’m much more resistant to sunburn, for instance, and my vision improved a bit.

So his problems were due to (a) wheat and (b) too much omega-6. His doctors had no idea.

The Mayo Clinic recommends a “ diverticulitis diet” that is clear liquids and low-fiber foods. According to the Mayo Clinic, “mild cases of diverticulitis can be treated with rest, changes in your diet and antibiotics. But serious cases of diverticulitis may require surgery.” The Mayo Clinic, it appears, has no idea what causes diverticulitis.

Tuck added:

It really pisses me off when people dismiss this, because it really makes a difference. I had a colleague who was in the hospital for a colon resection for diverticulitis. When he heard my story, he had the hospital put him on a gluten-free diet. Four days later, instead of having surgery as scheduled, he checked out: cured. He’s symptom-free on a gluten-free diet to this day.

I agree. As someone on the Shangri-La Diet forums put it, “you are handed a GIFT.” A story like this is a gift.

Does Scientific Research Cause Economic Growth?

Seth Roberts5 Comments

Many scientists say that science should be funded because it leads to economic growth. Today’s discovery, tomorrow’s new product, that sort of thing. It’s certainly plausible that more research will produce more growth.

Terence Kelley, a biochemist who was vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham, points out that some facts do not support this argument:

Two key pieces, one British, one American. The British one is very simple. The British agricultural and industrial revolutions took place in the 18th and 19th centuries in the complete absence of the government funding of science. It simply wasn’t government policy. The British government only started to fund science because of the Great War [World War I]. The funding has increased heavily ever since, and there has been absolutely no improvement in our underlying rate of economic growth.

But the really fascinating example is the States, because it’s so stunningly abrupt. Until 1940 it was American government policy not to fund science. Then, bang, the American government goes from funding something like $20 million of basic science to $3,000 million, over the space of 10 or 15 years. I mean, it’s an unbelievable increase, which continues all the way to the present day. And underlying rates of economic growth in the States simply do not change.

I believe the connection between research and economic growth is complicated. Veblen was certainly right, “pure” (= useless) research is high-status, “applied” (= useful) research is low-status. In the long run, this is a good way to allocate effort because although almost all the “pure” research is useless, a tiny fraction is not. And that tiny fraction might never have been done if pure research weren’t high-status.

Yet after pure research turns up useful stuff, professional scientists have serious difficulty making something useful from it. Almost all of my discoveries, such as the Shangri-La Diet and the effect of morning faces on mood, relied heavily on pure research. Without the pure research, I couldn’t have made them. The “pure” discoveries I used were well-known yet professional scientists were unable to grasp how they could be turned into something useful. I was able to go further than them for three reasons: 1. I was willing to spend a long time (decades) on a one problem. Professional scientists can’t wait that long. 2. I was trying to find a useful solution. Professional scientists tend to think useful research is low-status, as I said. 3. Studying myself instead of other people made me much more sensitive to unexpected effects.

Make Yourself Healthy: Crohn’s and the SCD Experiment

Seth Roberts6 Comments

In 2010, a Chicago woman named Johanna was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. She was 27 years old. Doctors told her to take drugs. She resisted. Here’s what happened, from a 2011 interview:

What do you do for living?

I’m an IT project manager. I’m on disability now because of flare-ups of my Crohn’s. I’m just getting a portion of my paycheck until the doctor thinks I’m healthy enough to work. When my flare up was bad, I had horrible joint pain, horrible cramping in the morning and throughout the day (pain was 8-10 on a 10-point scale). Chronic diarrhea, maybe 5-10 times/day. I’d be in meetings and doubled over in pain. My GI said I had one of the most inflamed colons he’d ever seen.

When were you diagnosed with Crohn’s?

April 2010. My symptoms started in January 2010. Bad gas, got worse. Diarrhea. In March, pooped my pants at work. Never happened before. Ran home and changed. Went to the ER 5 or 6 times from January to March because I was in so much pain. They thought it was Irritable Bowel Syndrome. One doctor said it was stress. “You need to manage your stress better.” I didn’t know what doctor to see. Only when I went to the Northwestern University ER did they say you might have a GI problem. Then I got a colonoscopy and was diagnosed with Crohn’s.

How was it treated?

With Prednisone, a steroid with horrible side effects. It caused me to have a big swollen moon face, a big belly, facial hair, cold sweats all night, I gained 15 pounds (from 120 to 135). I started taking it in April 2010. I took it until August 2010. I stopped taking it because I still had the same amount of diarrhea. It wasn’t working. I told my GI at the time. He gave me bad info about how to stop taking it. I did stop taking it and found a new GI. The new GI put me on Humira, an immunosuppresant, a TNF [tumor necrosis factor] blocker. I started it August 2010. No one told me about diet — “eat whatever you want” [she was told]. It was a shot I would get every 2 weeks. At first I got 4 shots. Within days of the first shots, I felt much better. I was a completely normal person. The Crohn’s symptoms were completely gone.

What happened next?

Led a totally normal life, worked at my company with success, everything was good. At the end of July 2011, I started having pain. In early August, I went to a new GI at Rush University Hospital. They have a really good GI and nutrition team. They are among the first studying the SCD [Specific Carbohydrate Diet]. I told him I had stomach pain, etc. He said to double the dose of Humera. That wasn’t a bad call. I doubled the dosage of Humera and got much worse. That’s when I started developing the joint pain and mouth sores. Cramping, horrible horrible pain. I had diarrhea for about two months.

Now we’ve reached the place where your blog starts? [She started a blog called The SCD Experiment]

Correct. I couldn’t absorb any nutrients. I had to quit work. From 31 August to 3 September I had a 102-3 degree fevers every day. I hoped it would pass. I stayed in bed the whole week. Then I started vomiting. I decided to go the hospital. I had lost 10 pounds in a week or two. I went to the hospital 4 September. In the hospital I lost even more weight. It turned out I had both an infection and antibodies to the Humera.

The first hospital I went to on 4 September was St. Francis Hospital. They were meticulous with my diet, gave me gluten-free lactose-free meals. I was very well taken care of there. All types of specialties to figure out what was going on. I had an infectious disease specialist. The infectious disease specialist was adamant I had an infection.

How did you learn about SCD?

I was in St. Francis hospital trying to figure out what to do about my future. I was looking at all the treatment options. I was researching Remicade. It had been recommended. The next logical step. I went to a ton of forums. Wide range of outcomes. Even if it worked, I would be tied to it. Always a chance of infection. You have to go to a hospital every 8 weeks, at best. I want to start a family. I don’t want to be tied to a drug. I didn’t want to do it.

My sister sent me a link to the Amazon reviews of Breaking the Vicious Cycle. You should really try this, she said. I thought there’s got to be something to this. These people made it work, why couldn’t I? What did I have to lose by trying it? I wanted to try a natural solution before blasting my body with something else. My last day at St. Francis I started to do the SCD.

I left St. Francis after 5 days because I had an appointment with the top GI doctor at Rush, Dr. Keshavarvian. He told me my problems were due to a flare-up of the Crohn’s. Including the fever. He said nothing about my suppressed immune system and the way it makes you more vulnerable to infection — although to be fair I knew this. To his credit, he said to eat a lot of yogurt.

As soon as I saw him, he admitted me to Rush right away to begin Remicade infusions. Remicade is another immunosuppressant, very similar to Humera.

I asked a lot of questions about Remicade. I asked a lot of questions about diet. They said just do the Remicade, and eat whatever you want. It’s a big hospital. Huge overwhelming swarm of lab coats pushing Remicade on me. More than five doctors told me to take Remicade. All of them worked for the GI doctor I’d seen in the morning. They were part of his team. I told the nutritionist I had Crohn’s. They sent me a lunch tray with processed turkey meat, a ton of gravy, and a brownie, and tomato bisque soup. Not one thing I could eat or digest. My husband brought me SCD-safe food I could eat. Once I saw that brownie, I decided to refuse Remicade. You’re going to tell me what I eat has no effect on my body, I’m going to tell you you’re wrong.

They were trying to set up the Remicade infusions. I said I needed one more night to sleep on it. The next morning, the 10th, I said thanks but no thanks. I’m going to try this diet and see what happens. They made me sign a waiver and I went home. At St. Francis they put me back on Prednisone, at lower doses. I’ve been tapering off.

The first week I was super-scared. Is this diet going to work? I was very weak, couldn’t stand up in the shower. I still had major Crohn’s symptoms. Every Thursday I got/get blood work. The first Thurday after I started SCD, the blood work results were better [see website for details], but I still felt bad. The second week, amazing. I felt like a new person.

On 23 September I had a follow-up with Dr. K at Rush. I gave him all my blood work and told him what I was doing. He was concerned. He said the diet was hard to stick to and that the legal/illegal list — what you can and can’t eat — was different for different people. He said that the diet fails for 3 out of 4 people. When you’re on the diet, you can have a flare-up so bad that you need to have your colon removed. These are the risks that you are facing by not taking the Remicade or Imuran. However, he’s one of the people spearheading the study of SCD at Rush. He told me we don’t have any studies showing that this diet works so I can’t in good faith recommend it.

By Week 5 she was much better. By Week 19 she was cured, in the sense of feeling normal and having normal lab results. ”I don’t even THINK about Crohn’s disease,” she wrote. “Unless it’s to reflect on how so very thankful I am that my sister Angela discovered this diet and talked me into trying it. I owe her my life back.” She started her blog at the same time she started SCD. Doctors told her the diet has a 70% failure rate. As the lab results and experience reported in her blog show, the diet worked.

 

 

 

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts4 Comments

Thanks to Bryan Castañeda and Joyce Cohen.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Introduction to Inside Tracker

Seth Roberts1 Comment

Inside Tracker sells blood panels — for example, 20 things measured in your blood (e.g., hemoglobin, magnesium, Vitamin D). It was founded in 2009 in Boston, Mass., by Gil Blander, a biology Ph.D., and two other people. They started offering the service in late 2011. Their main customers are athletes (20% professional, 30% amateur) and many Quantified Selfer’s (20%). I recently interviewed Dr. Blander:

What have you learned from the data you’ve collected?

Around 60% of the population has low Vitamin D.[What’s low Vitamin D?] As of today, if you look at the ranges of the diagnostic companies, they are saying that everything below 30 ng/ml is low Vitamin D. We are giving you your optimal zone based on age, gender, athletic activity and ethnicity. We also compare you to your peers.

What else?

More than 50% have high cholesterol (total and LDL). With folic acid, about 40% of the population have high folic acid. This is because of supplementation.

High creatine kinase (CK) is another common problem. When you exercise, some of the muscle cells break down and this protein leaks into the blood. An example is a marathon runner. Before the marathon it’s below 200 U/L. After the run it can be as high as 10,000 U/L. If you over exercise the level might be above 1000, and you have a much higher chance of getting injured. A bit more than 30% of our customers have high CK. It has a half life of 5 days. Your steady state CK should be less than 1000. Some supplementation can lower it, such CoQ10 and others.

Another marker we measure is hemoglobin. It measures the amount of iron in your blood cells. If you have low hemoglobin you compromise your athletic ability and decision making. About 30% of our customers have low hemoglobin. Another marker related to Iron is ferritin (protein that binds to free Iron), If you have low ferritin, take iron supplementation or eat iron rich food, that will increase both ferritin and hemoglobin. If you have normal ferritin and low hemoglobin, there are limited interventions to help you increase your hemoglobin, you may need to go to a high altitude place. Women below 50 tend to have low ferritin. The percentage is 10% among non-athletes, jumping to 30% among athletes. We also find it in athletic males. When you exercise, you have microbleeding from your gut. Among male athletes, 10-12% have low ferritin. The major concern is that they don’t know this.

What have you learned about how to increase Vitamin D?

When we started, we looked at the literature, it said you should take 400-800 IU/day. We found that even if you just take 1000 IU/day you will just maintain the level you already have. To increase it you need to consume at least 2000 IU/day. I started by testing myself. I found I had pretty low Vitamin D. At first I tried just food — fatty fish and mushrooms. I ate fish twice/day and a lot of mushrooms for a couple of months. Then I measured it again. It hadn’t changed. Then I took 1000 IU/day. I tested my blood again and it still hadn’t gone up. Then I went to 4000 IU/day and this brought me to the optimal level. And we saw the same with some of our customers.

Testosterone is a very interesting hormone. It’s hard to measure. When you overexercise, it’s low, because of the stress. It’s strongly influenced by amount of sleep, if you don’t sleep well, it will go down. We found if you look at the average consumer, around 10% have low testosterone, and none of them knew it. It’s an expensive test. Insurance companies won’t pay for it unless there is a reason.[What’s low testosterone?] The adult male: below 348 ng/dl. Women have about 20 times less testosterone. Only a tiny percentage of women, about 1%, have low testosterone.

TO GET 10% OFF ON INSIDE TRACKING TESTS, USE THIS CODE: SHANGRILA10

Does Unfamiliar Food Cause Weight Loss?

Seth Roberts2 Comments

My theory of weight control predicts that eating unfamiliar food will cause weight loss. As food becomes familiar, we learn to associate its smell with its calories. Stronger smell-calorie associations produce a higher set point than weaker ones. Unfamiliar food has not yet gone through this learning process.

One way to eat unfamiliar food is to travel to another country. When I’ve done this, I’ve usually come home a few pounds lighter, supporting the prediction.

Another way is to have someone else choose what you’ll eat. This is what Dan Goldstein did. “I emailed my friend Dan Reeves, who has a fitness-expert sister named Melanie Reeves Wicklow, to request a healthy diet I could follow for seven days with no exceptions.” He thought of it as a diet where he would make no decisions about what to eat.

Here’s what happened on Day One:

Discovered that if you eat oatmeal with an egg in it instead of just oatmeal, you feel full for much longer.

Here’s what happened overall:

I lost 15 pounds in about a couple months after the “no-decision” diet. (I lost no weight during the week of the diet).

My explanation: During the week of the diet, he ate the specified amounts, which were more than he would have eaten based on hunger. This kept his weight up. During the following weeks, three things happened: 1. He resumed eating according to hunger. His lower set point caused lack of hunger, which caused less eating, which caused weight loss. 2. Because he ate less, his set point went down. 3. During the no-decision week, he picked up some new habits, causing him to eat less familiar food during the following weeks. He says that the no-decision week “changed his cravings” and caused him to “commit to eating better”.

He also says the no-decision week caused him to exercise more but no details are given. I doubt this made a difference. Few people lose 15 pounds in two months from exercise so minor that they don’t bother to describe it.

Thanks to Andrew Gelman.

Earwax Transplant Story

Seth Roberts5 Comments

I think this actually happened:

A man came to the [University of Pittsburgh] clinic with a chronic infection in his left ear. He told doctors that other doctors had tried everything: anti-fungal drops, antibiotics, and many other treatments. The Pittsburgh doctors gave him additional antibiotics. The patient came back to the clinic a week later and said he was cured. The clinic doctors told him they were glad they had helped him. He said: “You didn’t. I suffered so much after your drugs I took some earwax from my right ear and put it in my diseased left. In two days I was fine, infection cured.” . . . The good ear contained good bacteria that killed off the bad in the bad ear.

I predict that people will eventually realize that the 2005 Nobel Prize for “ulcers are caused by bacteria” was a big mistake.

Thanks to Mark Griffith.

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts2 Comments

Thanks to Nandalal and Bryan Castañeda.

Furikake (Japanese Condiment): Attention Crazy Spicers!

Seth Roberts4 Comments

From a trip to Japan a friend gave me a mystery jar of some sort of flavoring. It turned out to be wasabi-flavored furikake. Furikake is used to season rice, I learned. It vaguely resembles salt and pepper but is far more complex and powerful. A version I bought has 25 ingredients, including sesame, wheat flour, lactose, salt, MSG, salmon, fish bone powder, and soybean protein. I use it many ways: on roast beef, eggs, and yogurt, for example. It is the easiest way I know to make hamburgers taste good.

The nearest Japanese market (in Berkeley) has 25 different types, I discovered. They cost about $4 each. I bought four. I’m going to buy ten more, to use for crazy spicing (randomly varying the smell of food to prevent strong smell-calorie associations from forming).