Category: omega-3

Journal of Personal Science: Omega-3 and ADHD (Part 2 of 2)

Seth Roberts13 Comments

by Allan Folz

My story of omega 3 and self-experimentation did not end with my wife and her pregnancy. As I mentioned, I discovered the paleo diet, Vitamin D, and fish oil all about the same time. Mostly for reasons of general good health we began supplementing with vitamin D and fish oil (Mega-EPA Omega-3 supplement). I ordered some of each from the same place online and we began supplementing both at the same time, around January-February of 2010.

At the time my son was in kindergarten and having problems socializing at school. He had them at home too, but we’d all adjusted to them at home. He exhibited a lot of what would be called typical spectrum issues, though I was certain he didn’t have anything approaching Asperger’s. Things that interested him, such as building with Legos playing outside with or without friends, he did quite well. It struck me that he was a high-energy boy who didn’t appreciate receiving directions, desk work, or anything requiring moderation and self-reflection. I like to joke that Tom Sawyer is hardly a modern archetype.

Nonetheless, he was having problems. The Vitamin D Council web site had a number of very persuasive anecdotes from parents about autistic children cured by Vitamin D. Our son wasn’t autistic, but autism involves several behaviors, and he had a few of them. He didn’t make good eye contact when talking or being talked to. He wouldn’t follow directions if he didn’t feel an intrinsic motivation to follow them. He could not fall asleep and would often lay in bed restless for an hour or more at night. The Vitamin D Council recommended 2000 IU per 50 lb/day, so that’s what we all took. We also took one fish oil capsule a week. At the time I thought of omega-3 only being for heart health. This made me a little skeptical about how much was really required. We seemed a healthy family, so I figured our needs were modest. One capsule a week seemed well beyond the norm so we should be good.

Almost immediately after beginning the supplements my son’s behavior improved. I was pleasantly surprised and attributed it to the Vitamin D based on what I’d read on the Vitamin D Council web site. It wasn’t a cure by any means, but it was a very noticeable improvement. He would still have bad days, and I was a little bummed that after the initial improvement the Vitamin D didn’t seem to be helping any further. However, I figured such is real-life outside of attention-grabbing headlines.

Two years later, January and February of 2012, second grade for him, and about a year and a half after the self-experiment with my wife during her third pregnancy, my son’s behavior dramatically worsened. We were all still taking D, but at that point it was obviously not showing any benefit for my son. He was in a worse place than when he was in kindergarten. I resigned myself to Vitamin D not being his problem, and at his teacher’s demand signed him up for outside testing.

I didn’t notice at the time, but we had run out of the “fish oil” over Christmas break. The second week of January we visited family in the Midwest. When we returned, school was a nightmare for him and us. My wife and I attributed it to too much TV, bad diet, and not enough sleep while we were visiting family. However, even two and three weeks after our return his problems were worsening. Around the beginning of February, I finally got around to ordering another bottle of the omega-3. I thought of it as mostly being for my wife, who was doing fine, so I didn’t feel any immediacy. When it finally arrived, we all started taking it again. Immediately his behavior improved. It was such a night and day difference the connection was impossible to miss. It was like kindergarten when he first started taking Vitamin D, only far more so. For the first time in two weeks he wasn’t angry and crying at the end of the day. That’s when it occurred to me that in kindergarten he started taking fish oil at the same time as Vitamin D. For the last two years I had been attributing to Vitamin D what was due to the omega-3 supplement. I felt like an idiot.

After that, I did some research on omega-3, fish oil, and ADHD. When I knew what to look for, I found that there were, in fact, a few studies about using omega-3 for ADHD treatment. It seemed that EPA was effectie while DHA was not, or at best, less effective than EPA. When I took a closer look at our “fish oil,” I remember thinking to myself, “Oh wow, this stuff is Mega-EPA. How lucky is that.” I had chosen it almost at random. It had the best per-dose price and was listed as a top seller.

In retrospect, were it not for the pain and difficulty experienced by my son, it would be funny how the answer was under my nose the whole time. I was slow to appreciate it because of my own prejudice and not treating the problem as something to scientifically test. I thought of omega-3 as being for heart health. I’d never seen it mentioned in relation to emotional health or brain development, outside of the usual bromides about eating walnuts and so forth. Plus the recommendations are always couched in generalities without specific dosage guidelines. Even after I discovered it made a difference for my pregnant wife, it didn’t occur to me to test it seriously on my son. Their symptoms and nutritional needs seemed unrelated.

A few weeks later we saw the professional who had tested our son to go over the results. A few weeks had passed between the evaluation and when we met to discuss the results; it was during that time that I made the omega-3 discovery. I told the professional that our son was getting really good results from the omega-3 supplement. I said that after noticing his results I’d done some online searching and there were a few scientific studies supporting the use of omega-3 supplements for ADHD. The professional said he was aware of the studies, but the efficacy wasn’t as certain or as strong compared to the prescription drugs so most people choose the prescriptions. (He sent me the same Bloch & Qawasmi paper Seth linked to in his April 21 Assorted Links.) I wondered if most people were even made aware of the possibility of omega-3 deficiency — he certainly didn’t bring it up with us. I would not have found the research papers without first knowing what to look for. I knew what to look for only because of the discovery I made with my son.

The omega-3 supplement, while a huge improvement, was not an immediate cure. We started giving him two capsules daily which consisted of 800 mg EPA and 400 mg DHA. That seemed to me a lot of omega-3, relative to what one could consume through normal dietary intake.

I was not overly comfortable with that level of dose long-term despite it clearly working. So every couple months or so I’d have him skip a day or whole weekend. Without fail, his mood noticeably worsened. By the early evening he would be overwhelmed and frustrated to the point of tears by little things that weren’t going his way, things that were really just the usual complications of life in a household with two parents and two siblings.

A poignant instance of the effects of missing a dose happened in the Fall of the following school year, still 2012. My wife’s mother came for a visit. The break from routine caused my wife to forget to give our son his omega-3 supplement for three or four days in a row. He might have had them on Sunday, but not on any of the weekdays. By Thursday I had gotten a note and phone call from his teacher about his behavior at school. We had to go and meet with her the following week. At the meeting I shared that we had forgotten to give him the omega-3 capsules due to his grandmother visiting. I saw this as proof it was working. The teacher didn’t know we had forgotten, and yet his behavior had noticeably regressed. She did not share my awe, and tried to imply that he should be on a prescription. I said that kids can forget prescriptions just as easily and the side effects from a missed prescription are going to be far worse than three days off an omega-3 supplement.

Last month we again ran out of the omega-3 supplement. Except for the accidental occurrence when my wife’s mother was visiting, this is the first time he’s been off it for more than a few consecutive days in the two years and two months since I first discovered it helped him. I’m quite pleased that he seems to be doing OK. There’s been virtually no difference in his behavior since stopping. However, it’s not a true cold-turkey quit. We have some of the Green Pastures FCLO infused coconut oil, so he’s been taking that instead. The manufacturer is vague about its omega-3 content, but my rough estimate is that he’s taking, a third to a half of his previous dose with the Mega-EPA capsules. Then again, it’s in the triglyceride form which is supposed to be 50-70% better absorbed on a per-gram basis. Perhaps it’s a wash.

I’ve thought about having him try flax oil. There is considerable debate about the efficacy of flax oil and the body’s ability to synthesize EPA and DHA from ALA, the omega-3 in flax oil. It might be a little late to test efficacy now. The best time to test was one and two years ago when the Mega-EPA supplement was clearly working and had an “efficacy” half-life of 24 hours. The thought never occurred to me until recently when reading Seth’s blog.

I can’t end without sharing some of my frustrations with the state of health science. There is no doubt in my mind that omega-3 helped both my son and my wife deal with some severe and yet common mental health problems. I’m a pretty sharp, pretty well-read guy that’s always had an interest in biology and medicine. Outside of a few esoteric corners of the web where you have to know what you’re looking for in order to find it, omega-3 is something you take for heart health.

I think the comparison with statins is apt. When “heart-healthy whole-grains” don’t fix one’s blood makers, and why would they, it’s very quickly on to prescription drugs (statins). When “use your words” doesn’t fix a young boy’s interactions with classmates and teachers, and why would it, it’s on to prescription drugs. Boys especially are put on incredibly strong pharmaceuticals with well-established risk factors that include stunted growth and suicide. Pharmaceuticals should be tried last, but they are clearly being tried first by frustrated parents and suspect practitioners. It’s a national shame and a personal outrage.

Part 1, about using omega-3 to treat postpartum depression, appeared yesterday. Allan Folz is a software developer in Portland, Oregon. He recently co-founded Edison Gauss Publishing, a software house that makes academically rigorous educational apps for children in grades K-8. Their apps are suitable both classroom and home use, and have proven to be particularly popular among homeschoolers that appreciate a traditional approach to practicing math.

Journal of Personal Science: Omega-3, Nursing a Baby and Postpartum Depression (Part 1 of 2)

Seth Roberts14 Comments

by Allan Folz

My wife had moderately severe postpartum depression (PPD) after the birth of our first child, a boy, in 2004. The depression lifted at the same time the nursing stopped, when he was about two years old. The pregnancy itself was without major or even minor problems so the depression was a big surprise. It was frustrating because nothing we did to alleviate it actually helped.

With our second child, born in 2007, for the whole pregnancy we were worried she would experience it again. Thankfully she did not. There were a couple of differences between the two pregnancies. Our first baby was a boy and born with a complication during delivery. The placenta did not release. This caused to be transferred to a hospital, as it was a home birth. At the hospital she was given two units of whole blood. Our second baby was a girl, also born at home, and this time with no issues.

Her third pregnancy was in 2010 and this is where the story begins.

A couple months before she became pregnant, I had discovered paleo dieting following a link to Richard Nikoley’s blog. I read about his experience and followed links to other sites in the paleosphere. The diet, the rationale behind it, and the numerous reports of other people having their health remarkably improved by it really resonated with me, so we adopted a lower-carb, paleo-style diet.

We didn’t have health problems that we were trying to correct for ourselves or a particular need to lose weight, outside of a few pounds for my wife relative to how much she weighed prior to her first pregnancy some six years before. However, I’ve always had an interest in health, medicine, and how the body functions. I even considered becoming an M.D. back in my undergrad days and minored in biology alongside my major in electrical engineering. I have a strong skepticism towards experts and what is the conventional wisdom in mainstream media sources. I think that’s why I almost immediately found Seth’s blog so intriguing, he questions the conventional wisdom and pushes people to take personal responsibility over their health and well-being. So, we were on a low to moderate carb diet, but weren’t fanatical about it. I remember that after my wife’s first visit with her midwives they were concerned by the ketones in her urine and strongly suggested she start eating more complex carbs. She followed their advice to be conservative. We were also supplementing Vitamin D and a little fish oil (a Mega-EPA omega-3 supplement). She was averaging 5K IU of Vitamin D a day, but only about one, 1 gram capsule once or twice a week of the fish oil. All in all, not much fish oil as I wasn’t sure how much was really necessary for people otherwise eating traditionally healthy, home-cooked meals, and I’m very skeptical of the diet supplement industry.

Late in the third trimester she started experiencing some moodiness. By itself, it probably would not have seemed atypical for a woman in her third trimester, but with my wife’s history we were far more sensitive to it and quick to take notice. Paying close attention (and long before discovering Seth’s blogging on self-experimentation), I eventually realized the moodiness happened when we’d skipped taking fish oils mid-week. If she didn’t take any mid-week, by Saturday it was very noticeable that her mood was on the short-tempered side. Once I noticed the connection, and without telling her what I was doing (i.e. single-blind), I’d deliberately skip the mid-week dose one week and note her weekend temper and mood. The following week I’d be sure she took a capsule mid-week. Next week back to skipping. Then, just to be sure, I had her double-dose one week. The double-dose had her in the best mood of all.

At first I was amazed. It was so neat, so mechanical — like flipping a switch. But it occurred to me that if two capsules in a week vs. one was enough to noticeably change her mood then she was obviously deficient as every mg was being put to use with no spare capacity in her system. I wondered if her body was scavenging omega-3 from her own brain for the developing fetus. That was a sobering thought. After that she went to supplementing daily and had no mood issues throughout the rest of the pregnancy or while breast feeding. She did have some of the typical “baby blues” that set in at the three day mark, but they did not last long. Also, she had good days and bad days, like anyone would. I’d say the omega-3 returned her to her normal bearing, irrespective of the demands of pregnancy and nursing.

There is zero doubt in my mind that omega 3 helped both my wife deal with a severe and yet all too stereotypical mental health problem. I’m a pretty sharp, pretty well-read guy who’s always had an interest in biology and medicine. After the experience with our son’s weaning, I wondered if nursing could cause or complicate PPD.

Seven years ago, when my wife was pregnant for the second time, I had searched the web for material related to those two (nursing and PPD) and came up empty-handed. I know I’ve never read something dealing with those two in mainstream outlets because it’s the type of thing I would mentally file away for future reference if the situation ever came up. It seemed like I was the only one willing to consider there might be a connection between them. Diet suggestions for nursing mothers are full of the usual bromides about getting enough complex carbs, fiber, and protein. Search engine auto-completes on “postpartum depression” don’t offer “omega-3” or “diet” anywhere in the top 10. You have to type the first two letters of each before they pop-up as auto-complete options. Today, the first hit for “postpartum depression diet” (I use Bing) is https://www.postpartum-living.com/depression-diet.html, which makes absolutely no mention of fats or lipids. It mentions vitamins, of course, but, incredibly, nothing specific.

During the two years my wife had PPD after her first pregnancy, no one suggested omega-3. At the time, I attributed her PPD to the delivery complications and the blood transfusion. I knew that depression is well-known among heart-attack survivors and IVF recipients, and, in my opinion, IVF is a pretty severe complication. Among the health professionals she saw about her PPD, the only thing the MD did was give her a prescription for Prozac or something similar, which she didn’t use because, well, of course — she was nursing. Had she quit nursing to take the prescription we would have attributed the improvement to the drug when it actually came from ceasing nursing. The naturopathic practitioners — she saw two different ones — gave her B-12 shots, SAM-e, melatonin, and a bunch of useless diet advice that one could read at all the usual places. The B-12 was good for a 24-48 hour energy boost. Other than that, none of them made the slightest difference.

Part 2, about using omega-3 to treat ADHD, will appear tomorrow. Allan Folz is a software developer in Portland, Oregon. He recently co-founded Edison Gauss Publishing, a software house that makes academically rigorous educational apps for children in grades K-8. Their apps are suitable both classroom and home use, and have proven to be particularly popular among homeschoolers that appreciate a traditional approach to practicing math.

Omega-3 and Omega-6 in Common Foods and My Consumption

Seth Roberts13 Comments

Here is a graph (source) of the omega-3 and omega-6 content of common foods. Although walnuts are relatively high in omega-3, they are much higher in omega-6. This may be why eating them reduced the performance of my lab assistants on a brain test.

When I’m in China, I eat 60 g/day of ground flaxseed. According to this graph, this provides 1.2 g/day omega-3, far more than I would get from any ordinary diet. For example, eating lots of fish would provide much less. I chose this amount based on balance and brain speed results. Flaxseed is hard to get in Beijing. Surely I am the biggest consumer in the China. I am pretty sure I am the only person ever to have optimized my intake. The best amount turned out to be surprisingly high. ”We recommend one to two tablespoons [per day],” says a website that sells flaxseed. High consumption of omega-3 should protect me against bad effects of omega-6. For example, when I eat peanuts (high in omega-6), my brain test scores don’t change.

Experts say flaxseed is a poor source of omega-3 because it provides short-chain omega-3 whereas the brain needs long-chain omega-3. My results — plenty of brain benefit from flaxseed — suggest this is wrong. The experiments that measured short-chain-to-long-chain conversion did not take account of the effect of experience on enzyme production. If you eat more of a certain food, your body will produce more of the enzymes that digest it. The subjects in the conversion experiments may have had little experience. If your long-chain omega-3 supply is limited by what enzymes can produce, you will get a steadier supply of long-chain omega-3 from enzymatic production than you will from eating the same amount all at once. For this reason dietary short-chain omega-3 could easily be a better source of long-chain omega-3 than dietary long-chain omega-3 itself.

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts5 Comments

Thanks to Alex Chernavsky and Dave Lull.

Omega-3: More Evidence of Brain Benefit

Seth Roberts7 Comments

From the Wall Street Journal:

In a study to be released Tuesday, participants with low levels of omega-3 fatty acids in their blood had slightly smaller brains and scored lower on memory and cognitive tests than people with higher blood levels of omega-3s. The changes [that is, the differences] in the brain were equivalent to about two years of normal brain aging, says the study’s lead author.

As this article recommends, I used to eat plenty of fish. But I still noticed a dramatic improvement in my balance and cognitive abilities when I started taking flaxseed oil. The best amount seemed to be 2-3 tablespoons/day. Fish wasn’t supplying close to the optimum amount of omega-3. One comment on the article was

The only proper response to this article should be, “Duh.”

I disagree. A better response is to ask How much room for improvement is there?

The “Disgusting” Foods I Eat

Seth Roberts22 Comments

In a review of Anna Reid’s new book, Leningrad: Tragedy of a City Under Siege, I learned that one of the calorie sources that starving Leningraders came to eat was:

‘macaroni’ made from flax seed for cattle

To which I say: Damn. The implication is that, before the famine, “flax seed for cattle”, which is roughly the same as flax seed, was considered unfit for human consumption. Only when starving did Leningraders stoop to eat it. I can buy flax seed in Beijing. But not easily.

The triangle is complete. I have now learned that the main things I care about in my diet, which I go to great lengths to eat every day, are all considered “disgusting” by a large number of people:

1. Flax seed. It is the best source of omega-3 I have found. I eat ground flax seeds every day. Flaxseed oil goes bad too easily.

2. Butter. Perhaps the most reviled food in America, at least by nutritionists. A cardiologist once told me, “You’re killing yourself” by eating it.

3. Fermented foods. Many fermented foods are considered disgusting — after all, they are little different than spoiled foods.

The Irrelevance of Grass-Fed Beef (Ancestral Health Symposium 2013)

Seth Roberts15 Comments

Grass-fed beef is better than ordinary (grain-fed) beef because it has a better omega-3/omega-6 ratio. I’ve heard this a thousand times. It’s true. Grass has more omega-3 than grain, which is high in omega-6. But it is misleading. For practical purposes, grass-fed and grain-fed beef are the same in terms of omega-3 and omega-6.

Peter Ballerstedt made this point in his talk at the recent Ancestral Health Symposium. He showed this slide, based on research by Susan Burkett. omega3omega6

This shows the amount of omega-3 and omega-6 in one serving of various foods. The amounts in grass- and grain-fed beef are small relative to other foods most people eat. People who have said eat grass-fed beef, such as Michael Pollan, should have been saying eat less chicken. When I started eating grass-fed instead of grain-fed beef, I noticed no differences, which agrees with this analysis.

Canker Sores Quickly Cured by Walnuts: More Evidence for Importance of Omega-3

Seth Roberts14 Comments

A reader of this blog named PSB, who lives in New Jersey, told me the following:

I’m 52. I happen to like walnuts and was snacking on them and noticed the pain from canker sores was lessened. I kept eating [walnuts] the next couple days and found the sores healed quickly, painlessly and were gone within a few days. They usually take quite a while to go away. The walnut thing was accidental and just from observation noticing the change in the sores. The sores are still gone and although I haven’t been eating lots of walnuts, I usually grab them here and there.

Her daughter “has suffered from canker sores for years . . . [and] gets multiple at a time and they are usually very painful.” Her daughter is resistant to eating walnuts. I asked why. “Doesn’t listen to her mother, knows it all and I sometimes thinks she prefers to complain. Other than that, no real reason, hahaha,” said PSB.

I’ve blogged before (here and here) about canker sores cured by omega-3. Walnuts are high in omega-3, supporting what I said. The Mayo Clinic lists eight possible causes of canker sores, including “A diet lacking in Vitamin B-12, zinc, folate (folic acid) or iron”. Nothing about omega-3.

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.