Let's start with a little biochemistry. Hope you are sipping your antioxidant green tea right now. Ahem. Carbohydrates come in two flavors, officially, simple, and complex. Nutrition junkies and medical folks tend to group them thusly: fruits and veggies, starchy carbs, and added sugars. Fruits and veggies are, for the most part, obvious. Starchy carbs include bread, crackers, cake, pastry, flour, tortillas, oatmeal, cereals, rice, corn, and potatoes (regular and sweet), and some other starchy root vegetables. Added sugars are table sugar, corn syrup, honey, maple syrup, molasses - you get the picture. Other types of foods, such as beans and milk products, are also pretty high in carbohydrates.
Carbohydrates are important in our sordid little tale of obesity due to their captaincy position in directing insulin to do its deeds. All carbohydrates that we eat, whether whole grains or white bread or Pepsi, go through our tummies and digestive organs, where some are released immediately (glucose), and others are kept around for further processing (into glucose, eventually). Once they are released, your blood sugar levels rise, signaling the pancreas to release insulin. Insulin is a growth hormone and leads the way in causing a whole host of reactions in our body - its main role is to help us store glucose, fat, and any extra protein we eat as fat. So if we eat a lot of carbohydrates and we don't burn them immediately by being Tour de France bike racers, we store it. Some glucose is stored in the muscles for short term reserves, but the rest is processed by the body and goes into the fat stores.
Here's where the fallacy of high carbohydrate, low fat diets really hit home, especially for anyone with type II diabetes, prediabetes, or insulin resistance (possibly anyone with abdominal obesity) Any kind of high carbohydrate diet will keep insulin levels high unless you really cut back on the calories, or you exercise like a maniac (1). Insulin is vital, but having too much floating around is implicated in type II diabetes, obesity, atherosclerosis, depression, dementia, and all those other diseases of Western civilization we spend all our free cash on as we get older. And guess what, the body has a nasty habit of cutting your metabolic rate when you cut calories, by lowering your base body temperature, making you lethargic so you move less, and pulling in a whole host of hormonal and neural changes designed to make you EAT. Your body doesn't care if you have several months' worth of extra fat - if you go super low calorie and rely on glucose for your primary fuel, you will feel as if you are starving. Same thing happens, unfortunately, when you exercise a lot. You can't help it. Every evolutionary driven instinct will have you eat more, and then you eventually gain weight.
A high carbohydrate, high fat diet is even worse. Carbs are the captain, after all. Sugar and starch tell your body to store all the carbs AND the fat you eat as fat!
However, carbohydrates aren't the whole problem. Let's look at the Kitavans in Papua New Guinea (2). they are a modern hunter-gatherer people who subsist mostly on a diet of starchy root vegetables and coconuts. High carb and tons of saturated fat. Also, 76% of the men and 80% of the women smoke, as tobacco has been farmed on the island for 100 years. They don't get more exercise than a typical westerner who has a physical job, or a moderately active exerciser who has a less active job. And guess what - no western disease! No angina, heart attacks, strokes (even though they have high cholesterol, due to the coconut diet), no diabetes, no cancer (except some squamous and oral cancers due to the tobacco and habits of chewing betel nuts - but no lung cancer!). The average BMI on the island for women is around 18.5 ("model thin"), and for men around 20. Their cholesterol and blood pressure do not rise with age as westerners do. These observations were made by doctors, not anthropologists. They tend to die of infections, accidents, homicide, or quietly of old age after fatigue for a few days. There is no malnutrition - leftover food abounds and is fed to the numerous dogs (3).
Also, let's look at the Raramuri of the Copper Canyons of Mexico, who eat mostly a corn meal mush, an antioxidant drink made of chia seeds, lime juice, and sugar, and corn beer. The kids also play a game before school that involves running 8 miles, and whole groups in the various villages routinely participate in footraces of 50-200 miles. Guess what - their hearts are in fine shape (according to McDougall, but then, I haven't exactly seen a CT scan of their coronary arteries or anything), and blood pressure is nice and low (4).
The Raramuri health can be explained by all the exercise (and running for them I'm guessing is low intensity - long distance high intensity exercise has been associated with developing atherosclerosis and inflammation (5) ), but what about the Kitavans? It must be something about the kind of starchy carbs they eat - no grains, no potatoes, no rice, no corn.
Most hunter-gatherer populations (in modern times or historically) do not eat as the Raramuri or the Kitavans do - they tend to eat mostly fruits, veggies, meat (lean grassfed meat, but also organ meats and bone marrow loaded with saturated fat!), fish, shellfish, nuts, seeds and some of those starchy root vegetables...
Sunday, June 13, 2010
The Basic Premise
I come from the perspective that the healthiest diet and circumstances for human beings, body and mind, will be the ones we are evolved for. In practical terms, that means the diet and habits of our Paleolithic ancestors. More recently I've focused my personal research on the nutritional aspects of this theory, and that is where I will begin with my blog posts. Paleolithic psychology is an academic science in it's own right. My particular interest is in where molecular biology, nutrition, and optimal brain function meet.
Let's begin with diet. Ancient humans ate wild game (including marrow and organ meats), shellfish, fish, tubers, green leafy vegetables, eggs, fruits, and nuts. Notably absent are the vegetable oils and highly processed foods created in the last 50 or so years. Grains (corn, wheat, barley, rye, oats, buckwheat, quinoa, millet, etc.), legumes (red and black and pinto beans, legumes, garbanzo beans, peanuts), nightshades (white potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant) and milk products are also relatively new foods to the human palate.
Anthropological evidence and epidemiological studies of modern and past hunter gatherers, as well as agrarian societies of the last 10,000 years, show us that the physical health of hunter gatherers far surpasses the health of grain-based societies (1). They lived longer (until the last 100 years and the invention of antibiotics and vaccines), and were free of diseases such as osteoporosis, metastatic cancer, and tooth decay, and modern hunter gatherers who eat traditional diets do not have diabetes, hypertension, obesity, atherosclerosis, acne, osteoporosis, dementia, or any of the most common cancers that we suffer from in the West.
Traditional agrarian societies were also relatively healthy (2), but they did not consume white flour, vegetable oils, refined sugar, or pasteurized milk products. In addition, they used a number of soaking and fermenting techniques to make grains and legumes healthier. And while some grains may be acceptable after preparation, I believe there may be no hope for wheat.
It is only in our modern world that we have access to entirely invented foods, chemical sugars, processed oils, quick rise breads, and genetically modified soy and wheat. While I will come up with a lot of biochemical smoke to pinpoint the fires in these nouveau foods that I believe are unhealthy, I do that out of intellectual interest rather than necessity. I already know that humans who did not eat those foods were healthier than we are. We'll see if we can find some good evidence that they were happier, too.
The vast majority of our calories should come from foods that are known to be healthy - grassfed beef, pastured chickens and other poultry and their eggs, pastured game meats and pigs, locally grown or organically grown produce, wild fish from unpolluted waters, coconuts and other tree nuts, and olive oil. Fermented and full fat (especially raw, if you are not immunocompromised - very young children and babies, pregnant women, etc.) dairy is also acceptable. Anything that has ingredients you cannot readily pronounce without a background in biochemistry should be, for the most part, avoided, as best you can. If you are a cook and have the time and industry to prepare grains and legumes as they should be prepared, then have at it. Don't worry, more details about the specifics will follow!
Let's begin with diet. Ancient humans ate wild game (including marrow and organ meats), shellfish, fish, tubers, green leafy vegetables, eggs, fruits, and nuts. Notably absent are the vegetable oils and highly processed foods created in the last 50 or so years. Grains (corn, wheat, barley, rye, oats, buckwheat, quinoa, millet, etc.), legumes (red and black and pinto beans, legumes, garbanzo beans, peanuts), nightshades (white potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant) and milk products are also relatively new foods to the human palate.
Anthropological evidence and epidemiological studies of modern and past hunter gatherers, as well as agrarian societies of the last 10,000 years, show us that the physical health of hunter gatherers far surpasses the health of grain-based societies (1). They lived longer (until the last 100 years and the invention of antibiotics and vaccines), and were free of diseases such as osteoporosis, metastatic cancer, and tooth decay, and modern hunter gatherers who eat traditional diets do not have diabetes, hypertension, obesity, atherosclerosis, acne, osteoporosis, dementia, or any of the most common cancers that we suffer from in the West.
Traditional agrarian societies were also relatively healthy (2), but they did not consume white flour, vegetable oils, refined sugar, or pasteurized milk products. In addition, they used a number of soaking and fermenting techniques to make grains and legumes healthier. And while some grains may be acceptable after preparation, I believe there may be no hope for wheat.
It is only in our modern world that we have access to entirely invented foods, chemical sugars, processed oils, quick rise breads, and genetically modified soy and wheat. While I will come up with a lot of biochemical smoke to pinpoint the fires in these nouveau foods that I believe are unhealthy, I do that out of intellectual interest rather than necessity. I already know that humans who did not eat those foods were healthier than we are. We'll see if we can find some good evidence that they were happier, too.
The vast majority of our calories should come from foods that are known to be healthy - grassfed beef, pastured chickens and other poultry and their eggs, pastured game meats and pigs, locally grown or organically grown produce, wild fish from unpolluted waters, coconuts and other tree nuts, and olive oil. Fermented and full fat (especially raw, if you are not immunocompromised - very young children and babies, pregnant women, etc.) dairy is also acceptable. Anything that has ingredients you cannot readily pronounce without a background in biochemistry should be, for the most part, avoided, as best you can. If you are a cook and have the time and industry to prepare grains and legumes as they should be prepared, then have at it. Don't worry, more details about the specifics will follow!
A Paleolithic Body and Brain
The next phase of medicine is coming, I hope. One where doctors will help people find solutions rather than medicate away the symptoms. The state of our health is tenuous, and our longevity is linked to a number of prescription drugs and expensive medical procedures. Most of us have to decide whether we want to die of heart disease or cancer. In the mean time, we live with disability at the end of our lives, often for many years.
I work in one of the most maligned and least understood fields of medicine - Psychiatry. My job is to help people feel better, and to accomplish this task I look at medical, genetic, psychological, and social influences on a person's life, and hopefully come up with a plan to correct glaring problems. A lot of the time, I prescribe medication to help the process along. I'm hopeful that an increased understanding of the brain and paleolithic nutrition will greatly reduce my need to rely on prescriptions in order to help people.
The brain is the most complicated and therefore vulnerable organ in the body. Almost any illness, medication, and nutritional deficit can show up first as vague (or not so vague) psychological or neurological symptoms. We are not supposed to be fatigued, scattered, depressed, or have wild aggression and mood swings on a regular basis. We are meant to be sharp, serene, and generally happy. If we look hard enough, I'm sure that science and common sense will give us some answers.
Our current state of health, by the numbers:
Mental Health
Cancer
Heart Disease
Diabetes
I want to do better.
I work in one of the most maligned and least understood fields of medicine - Psychiatry. My job is to help people feel better, and to accomplish this task I look at medical, genetic, psychological, and social influences on a person's life, and hopefully come up with a plan to correct glaring problems. A lot of the time, I prescribe medication to help the process along. I'm hopeful that an increased understanding of the brain and paleolithic nutrition will greatly reduce my need to rely on prescriptions in order to help people.
The brain is the most complicated and therefore vulnerable organ in the body. Almost any illness, medication, and nutritional deficit can show up first as vague (or not so vague) psychological or neurological symptoms. We are not supposed to be fatigued, scattered, depressed, or have wild aggression and mood swings on a regular basis. We are meant to be sharp, serene, and generally happy. If we look hard enough, I'm sure that science and common sense will give us some answers.
Our current state of health, by the numbers:
Mental Health
Cancer
Heart Disease
Diabetes
I want to do better.
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