Thread: On Health
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Old 03-26-21, 06:38 AM   #17
Skybird
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On OBESITY & DIABETES:


When I went to school, leaving school in the mid-80s, there were no fat kids. Today there are many fat kids, and some already have adult onset diabetes. Tendency growing. Fast.

The obesity wave started rolling in the 80s. That was when we slowly realised that still recommending refined white sugar maybe is not so good an idea. We started to avoid sugar, slowly, and started to turn to artificial high-chem sweeteners. And we started to become obese.

Sugar was not the only thing that changed. When I grew up, at home we had three meals a day, and rarely only was I allowed to snack inbetween. Sweets got strictly controlled by my Mom. I knew it to be like this with the parents of other kids as well. It was common, it was how parent used to run their "regime". Today, we snack all day long. Additionally to the main meals of the day. And obesity has turned into a pandemic overrolling the industrialised world. We have breakfast, on the way to work we have a bonbon maybe, in the office somebody switches on the caffee machine and guess what - somebody puts some cookies on the table. In the meeting we maybe have a piece of cake, the woke eco friends have a banana or apple instead, and then comes lunch. After that, this or that person may join colleagues in the cafeteria and have a coffee, probably with a cookie or a chocolte bar as dessert. Afternoon shift, more coffee maybe, ad an occasional toffee. And at home, what do we do? Having supper. And to the TV we go (many of us do not excercise, lets be honest), and what is a good film without some sweets or candies, popcorn or potatoe flips?

We eat all day long.

Our reaction to that obesity wave in many cases is a very infantile one: we start to babble about self-esteem and being proud of our (ugly fat) body, and we invest much time into convincing others of how great it feels to have this (ugly fat) body, and , in the end, convince mostly ourselves how well we feel in our (ugly fat) body, so that we must not lift our lower backs from he couch and start with getting something done about our beautifully ugly fat body. The health consequences of this ugly fatness we nevertheless will and must suffer in the future - but we ignore them as long as we do not feel the pain: non-alcoholic fatty liver, liver inflammation, liver hepathitis, diabetes-amputation-blindness-death, CVD, silent inflammations, auto-immune deseases.

How could it be that all this overwhelms Western societies, when we get so "well advised" by nutrition societies and state authorities to avoid sugar, to eat frequently and at rest, vegetable 5, 6 or 7 times a day, fruits 3, 4, 5 times a day, a balanced diet with "healthy plant oil" and no smoking and no alcohol? Its been recommended since 40 years. And thats the 40 years when the obesity wave arrived and started to flatten society and financially overwhelm health systems with ugly fat bodies.

Is the good advise by nutrition societies really that good an advise? Well, to put it this way: I avoid such nutrition societies and their advice like the most lethal of pleagues. I cannot even just laugh about them anynmore - I am furious about them. Due to their eating advice, but also for other reasons having to do with supplements and how they demonise them and mistake absolutely minimum doses as above-optimum and almost dangerous doses. It oversteps the thin red line to physical assault, like recommending to eat rat poison would.

What is wrong with having 5 portions of fruits per day and 5-7 portions of vegetable per day? Well. You eat. And eat. And eat. And eat. And eat. And eat. And eat. And eat. And eat. And eat.

You eat all day long. You layaway yourself from fruit to vegetable, from vegetable to fruit (if you would do that). More realistically, you layaway yourself from snack to snack. Unhealthy snacks, filled with plenty of bad oils and fats, and sugar. You add limonades and corn syrup-enriched liquids.

And almost every time you put something into your mouth, your create an insuline spike.

Artificial sweeteners do not save you. They may not rise your blood glucose level, they may not add calories to your metabolism, but they nevertheless trigger an insuline production spike. Worse, this spike can be higher than that of a similiar amount of sugar! I did not know this until just days ago. I did not like learning this. I do not drink lemonades, but I thought I do a little good deed when not using sugar but sweetner in my coffee. Damn!

Insuline is a hormone whose purpose is to press fructose into the liver and into the fat cells. Whenever insuline gets produced, you build fat - in the liver with its limited storage capacity (reach that limit and the liver starts to form "symptoms"), and into the body's fat cells.

It is a myth that you become fat due to eating more calories than you "burn", it also is a myth that you can loose weight by exercising. There are even studies showing that it does not work this way.

The problem is - insuline. This is at the heart of the problem of obesity and diabetes. The more often you eat, the more insuline spikes you have over the day. The more often your fat depots get fed. The more your general insuline level must rise, due to rising insuline restistance: more and more insuline is needed to still get all that fructose pushed into your overloaded fat cells.

And here you have the reason why fat is not your enemy, but your friend, good fats that have no trans fats and that have small or minor levels of inflammatory Omega 6 in them: fat does not create insuline spikes. Not on a level worth to be mentioned at least. By eating fat, you offer your body the other fuel that it can burn: beside glucose, it can burn fat. The liver forms ketones from it. Ketones can feed your cells' energy cycles, especially your brain cells, and they can pass the blood brain barrier. Many cells in the brain and elsewhere even have the ability to take certain fats directly and build the ketones themselves, by passing the liver and not needing it, this for example is true with many brain cells.

"Food light" products, with reduced fat contents, work as good as sweeteners, therefore: not at all. Plus they are inferior in taste.

Proteins and carbohydrates trigger insuline spikes, fat does not. Now you know why many diets limit carbs ("low carb"). Full grain bread often has a higher glycaemic index than refined sugar! Not even connecting to the health issues that can be caused by wheat itself, it must be said that full grain diet probably is not a good idea at all, at least if you want to loose weight, or have a diabetes issue.

Another good method to reduce insuline production is - to not eat at all. Fasting. There is nothing wrong with it, its a natural state in our evolution. There are many ways how to do it, personally I have become a fan of intermittend fasting. I did it for 12 months three years ago, I lost 14 kilograms in six months, and kept that level easily for another 6 months. Alsmost 92 kg before, almost 76 kg after.

Nowadays, I have just two meals a day, a late breakfast and a later lunch with a warm meal. I only eat in the time window of 12am to 8pm, and every second or third or fourth day, depends on how I feel, I even skip the breakfast, and reduce the lunch to something with low calories not above around 600, its the only thing I care to make a reasonable calory estimation for - elsewise I think counting calories is total bollocks.

A recent blood test I needed to do in preparation for the anesthesia during a planned jaw surgery showed me unwelcomed high levels of blood glucose, low levels of HDL, and a slightly elevated level of GPT (which is an indicator for the liver health, often meaning there are inflammated cells in the liver). All this together with my weight development of the past months and last year indicated to me what I already suspected in decembre, due to my again reached weight of 92 kg back then: that I likely had a non-alcoholic fatty liver, and was and maybe still am in a state of so-called pre-diabetes.

Already in Decembre I had started with intermittend fasting again. I already was busy with studying vitamines and minerals due to corona and immune system and all that, as you have noticed , but since a few weeks, since that blood test, have dived into diet and low carb as well, combining low carb and intermittend fasting with elements of ketogen diet, especially I had - already before - replaced bad fats with good fats, and pushed fish and Omega-3 oil up on my charts. I try to teach my body to depend less on carbohydrates, and more on fats as a major fuel. And I am successful, I am at 81 kg (that is 11 kg in 3 months), still dropping constantly, it goes faster than three years ago when I fasted without low carb and keto.

If there is one message one should really understand about why we become obese despite doing as we are advised and using light food products and sweeteners, than it is this: obesity and diabetes are caused by dysbalances in the insuline metabolism. You do not become obese so much by what you eat, but when you eat. And "When" means: by eating too often and keeping your insuline level high all day long.

Antidot: Keeping insuline low, and avoid as many spikes as you can. Thats why fatty diet, low carb work, as does fasting. Combine the fatty diet (low insuline and switching to fat instead of glucose burning) with intermittend or full days fasting (reducing the number of opportunities over the day when insuline goes up) is your way to go.

The combining of intermittend fasting and elements of keto and low carb I experimented with and stumbled over all by myself, without having a full model of understanding, I imagined more or less a rough orientation (which turned out to have been right on target and being in congruency with theory I now read), but a few days ago I finally also found a very competent author and expert who finally also gave me the full deal on theory and explanation that my intellectual mindset also craves for. I want to recommend him to you if you feel interested in these topics for any reason. His name is Jason Fung, he is a Canadian nephrologist who got interested into these topics twenty years ago and today usually gets announced as one of the world's leading experts on treating obesity and diabetes. Form yourself an impression of him, I provide links at the bottom for starters. There are several books by him, I recommend his two bestsellers "The Obesity Code" and "The Diabetes Code".

Read 2 minutes, his best advise:
https://www.dietdoctor.com/my-single...eight-loss-tip

Get an impression on the man in person:
https://www.dietdoctor.com/how-to-maximize-fat-burning

^ The video, lasting 4 minutes., Four minutes that have it all in them.

I like the man. He is smart, I find him sympathetic, and after two books that I consummed in two rushed readings I say he obviously knows his stuff inside out. Here is a doctor whom I trust!

I will not avoid forever carbs, wheat, pasta. I baked my bread over 25 years myself, i would not have done that if I would not LOVE the taste and smell of fresh, good bread. I know a thing or two about how to do a real good pizza dough (like none I can get in any restaurant here in my hometown). I LOVE spaghetti with two or three different sauces I use to prepare for them. I love boiled potatoe with herring in dill cream, and ibnly butter and salt on the potatoes. But I will for exmaple avoid noodles, potatoes as part of a lunch that has other main inredinets: give me the fish, the meat, the fat, the vegetable, the sauce - but keep rice, noodles, potatoes.

But my short time goal is to drop below 80kg, my medium time goal is to get into the med-70 range, and my long time goal is to get near or right on the mark of 70. Thats why I currently eat more fat than before, but not as much as I would like to: the fat I eat is the fat my body must not burn from his fat deposits (take this as an indication that "eat fatty!" does not mean to blindly consume fat in absurd quantities). Thats why I avoid carbs currently. Thats why I drink no alcohol, no carb-including alcoho-free white beer, no pasta. Its not forever, but for some more months. Once I reached my target weight, I will eat carbs again, but at limited amounts and with time pauses between them, days. I will eat even more fat. I will allow myself an occasional Bailey's again. Life is too short to pass on all the good things always and forever.

Because last but not least: EATING SHOULD BE PLEASURABLE AND FUN AND SHOULD GIVE SATISFACTION IN TASTE AND SMELL!

This together with the massively improved nutrition status that i started to implement last year, results in many health benefits, loss of minor physical symptoms, and greater mental and emotional stability of mine. I feel so good like I have not since - well, since as long as I can remember. Very long time, I mean.

I had to change my doc, however, the old one was too unwilling to learn new, and strictly limited himself to what he learned at university long time ago, and what the DEG, the German Nutrition Society, says. The new one is not more educated, but a bit more open to listen to new stuff. Thats okay, I see doctors not as people making decisions in my place, but only as advisors. And I must not accept every advice if it does not make sense to me or cannot be reasonably explained.

Listen to your doctor - but never blindly trust one. They too are just humans, you know.
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Last edited by Skybird; 03-26-21 at 08:31 AM.
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