The Evolution of Lactose Tolerance and My Butter Discoveries

Seth Roberts30 Comments

From a BBC documentary called Are We Still Evolving? I learned that after the development of farming there was intense selection in Europe for “lactose tolerance” — meaning the ability to digest lactose as an adult, which requires the enzyme lactase. (The technical name is lactase persistence.) The necessary gene spread rapidly. Now most Europeans have the gene. In Ireland almost everyone has the gene. Mark Thomas, an evolutionary geneticist interviewed on the show, who does research on lactose tolerance, said this:

It’s probably the most advantageous characteristic that Europeans have evolved in the last 30,000 years.. . . The advantage that’s been measured is just incredible, absolutely incredible, how big an advantage it was for these early farmers in Europe.

“Why would drinking milk into adulthood be so strongly selected for?” asked Alice Roberts, the presenter. Thomas replied,

Milk has got lots of energy in it, it’s very nutrient dense, it’s got lots of other goodies, like various vitamins, calcium, and so on. Also, it’s a relatively clean fluid, so it’s much better than drinking stream water or river water or well water or something like that. Another advantage is if you’re growing crops you have a boom and bust in terms of the food supply.

Not a word about butterfat — “lots of energy” is true of all fats. The rapid spread, the “incredible” advantage, suggests that milk supplied something resembling a necessary nutrient. As if everyone had been suffering from scurvy and the new gene allowed them to eat citrus — something like that. Such a gene would spread rapidly.

Does milk supply a necessary nutrient? My results suggest that butter — half a stick (60 g)/day — provides two clear benefits: 1. Better brain function. 2. Less risk of heart disease (probably). As far as I can tell, roughly everyone in America would get these benefits because their diets now lack enough of whatever it is. Both benefits reflect invisible problems. Like everyone else, I had no idea my brain function could be substantially improved and had no idea of my rate of progression (narrowing of arteries) toward atherosclerosis. Only because of unusual tests (the arithmetic test and a “heart scan”) did I notice sudden large improvements when I started eating lots of butter — what you’d expected from addition of a missing necessary nutrient. This explains why Thomas and almost everyone else is unaware of these benefits.

Keep in mind that before I started eating butter, I already ate a high-fat low-carbohydrate diet. Yet I wasn’t getting enough of something in butter. I already ate lots of pork fat. Perhaps the saturated fat in butter is better digested than the saturated fat in pork. Or perhaps the fat profile is better.

If lactose tolerance is so helpful, why are most Asians lactose intolerant? My work suggests two answers: 1. Yogurt. Long ago, Asians ate lots of yogurt. I know the Mongols did. There are present-day indications of this. The Chinese appreciate the value of yogurt more than Americans. Yogurt is more common in Chinese supermarkets than American ones. Yogurt makers are better and more common in China than Europe and America. Lots of Chinese make their own yogurt; as far as I can tell, home yogurt making is more popular in China than America. You can buy a cheap good yogurt maker many places in Beijing, unlike San Francisco. Yogurt provided butterfat. 2. Pork. The Chinese, of course, eat far more pork than Europeans. Unlike cows, pigs supply a cut with a large amount of fat: pork belly. I found it easy to get plenty of pork belly in China and eat it as the main course. Difficulty getting pork belly in the Bay Area is what pushed me to eat butter. This view predicts that European farmers raised more cows than pigs.

Anyway, to summarize, the great advantage conferred by lactose tolerance suggests the great value of something in milk if you eat a European-farmer-like diet. My work supports this; it suggests the crucial ingredient is butterfat. Which many Americans carefully avoid!

Note: The danger posed by the high level of AGEs (advanced glycation endproducts) in butter I don’t know about — but of course this danger has nothing to do with why lactose tolerance was so beneficial. My experience so far (the heart-scan improvement) suggests that that ordinary butter is not “artery-constricting”. Presumably AGEs are formed when milk is pasteurized so I would prefer to eat unpasteurized butter.

How Rare My Heart Scan Improvement?

Seth Roberts21 Comments


In 2009, I had a heart scan — a three-dimensional X-ray. The scan was used to calculate an Agatston score, a measure of arterial plaque. Higher scores mean a higher risk of heart attack. A few months after that, I discovered that butter improves how fast I do arithmetic.

Because butter was good for my brain, I started eating half a stick of butter (66 g) every day. Surely the butter was improving overall brain function. The effect of butter on the rest of my body I didn’t know. However, I thought it was highly unlikely that a food that greatly improves brain function is going to damage the rest of the body. The food you eat, after digestion, goes to the whole body (leaving aside the blood-brain barrier). Every part of the body must have been optimized to work well with the same food.

As I have posted earlier, I had a second heart scan, producing a second Agatston score, about a year after the first one. Amazingly, the second score was better (lower) than the first score. The woman in charge of the testing center said this was very rare — about 1 time in 100. The usual annual increase is about 20 percent.

Now I have gotten more information about the annual rate of change in Agatston scores. The graph above (thanks to Harry Rood) shows data from 40 people who listed their scores at the Track Your Plaque site. It is based on pairs of consecutive scores: it plots change versus level (average?). Because some people provided more than two scores, the data allowed 77 points to be plotted. My two scores were 38 (log 38 = 1.58) and 29 (log 29 = 1.46). So the decrease in log units was 0.12. If you look at the graph, you can see what an outlier this is — as I was told, it really is about 1 in 100.

Here we have the conjunction of two unusual things: 1. Eating half a stick of butter per day. Almost no one eats so much butter. 2. An extremely rare drop in the Agatston score over the same period. A principle of reasoning called Reichenbach’s Common Cause Principle says if two rare events might reflect cause and effect, they probably do. You can think of it like this: Lighting doesn’t strike twice in one place for two different reasons. Indeed, there is other evidence that high levels of saturated fat cause heart-scan improvement (even though this contradicts everything you’ve been told). Mozzafarian et al. (2004) found that in postmenopausal women, “a greater saturated fat intake is associated with less progression of coronary atherosclerosis.” So it is quite plausible that my butter intake improved my Agatston score.

Personal Science in Japan: Radioactivity Measurements

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Personal science isn’t just self-measurement. In Japan:

Kiyoko Okoshi had a simple goal when she spent about $625 for a dosimeter [that measured radioactivity]: she missed her daughter and grandsons and wanted them to come home. Local officials kept telling her that their remote village was safe, even though it was less than 20 miles from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. But her daughter remained dubious, especially since no one from the government had taken radiation readings near their home.

So starting in April, Mrs. Okoshi began using her dosimeter to check nearby forest roads and rice paddies. What she found was startling. Near one sewage ditch, the meter beeped wildly, and the screen read 67 microsieverts per hour, a potentially harmful level. Mrs. Okoshi and a cousin who lives nearby worked up the courage to confront elected officials, who did not respond, confirming their worry that the government was not doing its job.

With her simple yet bold act, Mrs. Okoshi joined the small but growing number of Japanese who have decided to step in as the government fumbles its reaction to the widespread contamination, which leaders acknowledge is much worse than originally announced.

Maybe it is obvious that a woman who wants to see her grandchildren yet keep them safe is far more motivated to find the truth than a local politician or even surveyors hired by the government. Personal scientists who study other things have the same motivational advantage. As I have said more than once, I care far more about improving my sleep than any professional scientist.

Mrs. Okoshi misses her daughter and grandchildren very much. Her husband recently died and her daughter’s family left, afraid of nuclear fallout.

“Our life was so lively when the four boys were running around the mountains in the back of the house,” she said.

Personal science channels her emotion in a way that helps everyone around her.

My Daily Dose of Flax Seed

Seth Roberts11 Comments

Currently I eat 33 grams (= 45 ml = 3 tablespoons) of flax seed in yogurt twice a day. That’s 66 g/day (which contains about 2 tablespoons of flaxseed oil). I grind it for 30 seconds before adding it to the yogurt. I like yogurt with ground flax seed better than yogurt without it, leaving aside the health benefits.

Unlike flaxseed oil, which must be kept cool, flax seed can be stored at room temperature, which makes a huge difference. I discovered that Chinese flaxseed oil was worthless, presumably because it hadn’t been kept cool. To bring American flaxseed oil to China was a nightmare — lugging it, trying to keep it cool. Chinese flax seed is fine, and not hard to get in Beijing.

The Comments on “Finding the Source of Migraines…”

Seth Roberts10 Comments

Nowadays, far more than ever before, people can do useful science (collect data, draw conclusions) about their own health. This personal science can produce much better results than expert advice. For example, I found ways to sleep better and raise my mood superior to what sleep and mood experts know. I wonder how others are using this new power. This is why I wrote a story for Boing Boing about a woman (Sarah) who figured out what caused her migraines after conventional doctors failed to help her. She was eventually helped by an expert (a naturopath) but most of the improvement came from self-experimentation showing that cleaning and skin care products caused migraines.

The story got many comments. A surprising number were eerily dismissive. You might think it was a good thing that Sarah got rid of frequent crippling migraines after doctors failed to. Nope: “Anecdotes are not data” (56 likes). The same person also said “data is data”. Both are examples of preventive stupidity. “Big Brother loves you,” replied Mark Frauenfelder, and I agree. Another surprising comment was “Don’t encourage these people” (= people like Sarah). One of the dismissista s came to his senses. “I’d simply like to close with an apology, as on reflection little I’ve posted here has been useful or expansive,” he wrote.

Some comments nicely summed up the main points of the story. “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” was a good description of Sarah’s conventional doctors. They acted as if their only tool was the ability to write prescriptions — so every problem called for a prescription. When the first 10 drugs didn’t work, they tried more drugs. When the first 30 drugs didn’t work, they tried more drugs. Surely this is bad medicine, yet, as far as I can tell, that’s what they learn to do.

Some comments asked questions it would have helped if I had anticipated. How could Sarah have tried 50 different migraine drugs and 13 different birth control pills in one year? I wasn’t puzzled by this but details would have clarified things.

Above all, the comments supported my belief that Sarah’s problem was common. Many commenters said they had migraines caused by environmental triggers. Only one said his migraines turned out to be caused by a tumor. In spite of this pattern of causality, the comments also suggested that conventional doctors generally prescribe drugs for migraines. (“They had the prescription typed into the system before I was even finished telling them what was going on.”) It’s like trying to enter a room by breaking through a wall (prescribing a drug) instead of using the door (finding the triggers). It’s as if all they have is a sledgehammer.

 

Assorted Links

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“Everyone Agrees: Fresh Food Better.” Uh, Not Everyone.

Seth Roberts8 Comments

In a brief Atlantic article about the paleo diet, Alesh Houdek writes:

There is no question that we should eat more fresh and unprocessed foods. . . . The Paleo diet’s dictum to eat as fresh as possible is shared universally with all modern sane eating guidelines.

As regular readers of this blog know, I disagree that “fresh is better”. Fermented is not just better but necessary. To work best, I think our bodies need substantial daily doses of fermented food or their microbial equivalent. Evolution has shaped us to like sour, umami-flavored, and complex-flavored food so that we will eat more microbe-laden food. More about this in these posts. Pass the umeboshi.

 

 

Science in Action: Why Energetic?

Seth Roberts5 Comments

Last night I slept unusually well, waking up more rested and with more energy than usual. I slept longer than usual: 7.0 hours versus my usual 5.1 hours (median of the previous 20 days). My rating of how rested I felt was 99.2% (that is, 99.2% of fully rested); the median of the previous 20 days is 98.8%. Because the maximum is 100%, this is really a comparison of 0.8% (this morning) with 1.2% (previous mornings); and the comparison is not adjusted for the number of times I stood on one leg to exhaustion, which improves this rating. During the previous 20 days I often stood on one leg to exhaustion six times; yesterday I only did it four times. Above all, I felt more energy in the morning. This was obvious. I have just started to measure this. At 8 am and 9 am, I rate my energy on a 0-100 scale where 50 = neither sluggish nor energetic/energized, 60 = slightly energetic/energized, 70 = somewhat energetic/energized, and 75 = energetic/energized. My ratings this morning were 73 (8 am) and 74 (9 am). The median of my 9 previous ratings is 62. The energy improvement (73/74 vs 62) is why I am curious. I would like to feel this way every morning.

What caused it? I had not exercised the previous day. My room was no darker than usual. My flaxseed oil intake was no different than usual. I had not eaten more pork fat than usual. However, four things had been different than usual:

1. 2 tablespoons of butter at lunch. In addition to my usual 4 tablespoons per day.

2. 0.5-1 tablespoons of butter at bedtime. Again, in addition the usual 4.

3. 1 tablespoon (15 g) coconut butter at bedtime. Part of a longer study of the effect of coconut butter. Gary Taubes suggested this. I had eaten 1 T coconut butter at bedtime 13 previous days. On the first of those 13 days, I had felt a lot more energetic than usual in the morning. On the remaining days, however, the improvement was less clear. I started measuring how energetic I felt in the morning to study this further. Last night was Friday night. On the previous two nights (Wednesday and Thursday) I had not eaten the coconut butter. Maybe absence of coconut butter followed by resumption of coconut butter is the cause.

4. Fresh air and ambient noise. Following a friend’s suggestion, I opened one of my bedroom windows.

My first question is whether the improvement is repeatable. If so, I will start to vary these four factors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Assorted Links

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  • The Practice of Personal Science (talk by Gary Wolf)
  • fingerprints predict mental abilities (might be gated).
  • “When compared with nondepressed individuals, both medically ill and medically healthy patients with MDD [Major Depressive Disorder] have been found to exhibit all of the cardinal features of inflammation.” Article here.
  • “A professor of physics [from Australia] told me: Brian [J. O’Brian, a professor of physics], I completely support what you’re saying [about lack of evidence for man-made climate change], but I’ve got 65 researchers in my laboratory and the only funding I can get for them and to get their PhDs is greenhouse funding from Canberra or wherever. Twenty years people have been indoctrinated.”. Excerpts here.

Thanks to Mark’s Daily Apple.