Sardines

I used to have sardines every once in a while when I was a kid. I didn’t have them again until recently. I bought a can at the local grocery, and was shocked at how tiny they were compared to the ones I remembered. They were only about 2 inches long, and about a quarter inch wide--compared to 8 inches long and 2 or 3 inches wide back then.

My family was in the fishing business for several generations, including starting the first sportfishing business in San Diego in the early 1900s. Over a period of years, the size, number and extent of large game fish, such as marlin, albacore tuna, etc, dropped off dramatically. My grandfather swore that the cause was the canning industry’s overfishing of sardines, which were a primary food source for the game fish. He fought them for many years. Unfortunately, even though the canning industry eventually collapsed in the 1950s (their behavior caused their demise), the stocks of both sardines and game fish have never returned to what they once were.

Troubleshooting low-carb

Are you eating Paleo, and yet often still hungry at the end of a meal? If so, it may be due to low blood sugar. One of the body’s responses to low blood sugar is to make you feel hungry. Why might your blood sugar so low? One possibility is that you are eating too much protein. The protein will cause insulin to be released, which will then lower your blood sugar (the opposite of what you need at that point). Another is that you had carbs at an earlier time in the day, and that after the initial spike in blood sugar, your body has over-corrected into a blood sugar low. This is “hypoglycemia,” and is very common.

The solution is to cut back on protein and carbs. What happens when you cut back both protein and carbs is that fat, as a percentage of total calories, needs to go up; fat also tends to be very satiating.

This type of diet change does take time. However, once your body enters fat-burning mode (which is indicated by being in ketosis), one benefit is that most people tend to get hungry much less often; for example, I can generally go at least 15 hours between meals without feeling hungry. That also means less cooking. Being in ketosis also means that your insulin levels are at their lowest, which will minimize blood sugar swings, which is part of why it helps resolve hunger issues. You do have to be careful about increasing fat without also decreasing carbs. If you don’t cut back on carbs, the resulting high insulin levels are a pretty sure-fire way to gain weight; yet most people will actually lose weight on a high-fat, low-carb, low-protein diet. In addition to controlling blood sugar, insulin also acts as a “storage hormone,” which causes excess calories to be stored as fat.

[[MORE]]I know many people have trouble giving up sweets. I was in that camp myself, in fact. I tried fake sweets years ago, but found they actually made things worse, by constantly reminding me of what I couldn’t have. My ultimate solution (not for everyone!) was to replace sweets with bitters: things like cocoa, coffee and dark green veggies. After a few months of that, not only do I not find those things bitter any more, on the few occasions when I’ve tasted something sweet, they now generally taste sickly-sweet to me.

If you have fat tolerance issues, you might try taking a lipase-containing supplement with your meals. Lipase is an enzyme that helps to break down fats. You might also try several different types of fat, to see if you tolerate some better than others (butter vs. cream, for example, or cooked vs. not); even the texture can make a difference. A few ideas to help increase your overall fat intake:

• Add cream when cooking your meat. It helps dissolve the grease, and adds tremendously to the flavor.


• Mix your avocados with a little olive oil – can be great in salads.


• Try a half-cream / half-milk beverage as desert; possibly with a little coffee or cocoa (also an option for a quick meal).


• When cooking eggs, try tossing out an occasional egg white to decrease protein and increase fat. You can also add a few tbsps of cream to your eggs; plenty of cheese is nice, too.


• If you like bacon, and like the taste but not the greasy feel of the grease, cook the bacon first, then toss about half the resulting grease, and cook eggs in the same pan. Adds lots of flavor to the eggs, and doesn’t taste greasy at all.


• Use plenty of butter and/or some occasional cream when cooking your veggies.


• Retain and eat the skin on chicken, rather than tossing it out (plenty of fat; very tasty).


• Buy less expensive cuts of meat; the ones with a higher fat content (more marbling, etc).


• Add grated cheese liberally to veggies and meat.


• Drink your coffee or tea with plenty of cream.


• For a quick, no-think meal, try full-fat unsweetened / no-fruit yoghurt with a few drops of vanilla; the one I get is only about 5% carbs.

You could also try blenderizing your cream a little before using it, to see if it improves digestability for you by breaking up some of the fat globules (avoid too much blenderizing, though, or you’ll end up making butter).

Also, in addition to a diary, you might consider tracking the composition of the foods you eat on a site like fitday.com—at least for a few days. That will help you see how much of your meals are carbs vs. protein vs. fat. That can also help you find “hidden” sources of carbs in your diet (for me, it was too many nuts).

A rebuttal of the China Study

The "China Study" claims to prove the superiority of vegetarianism. Only it doesn't. Here's a link to an interesting rebuttal:

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/obesity/another-china-study/

Correcting mineral deficiencies

Whether correcting deficiencies with whole foods alone is possible depends on many factors: how bad the deficiencies are, which minerals are deficient, your health status, environmental conditions, etc. For example, if you live in an area with selenium-poor soils, and that's your only deficiency, then eating whole foods that contain selenium should be enough. But if you're unhealthy and have a number of deficiencies that have advanced to the point where your ability to absorb nutrients from your food is impaired, then food alone may not be enough.

There are things you can do to improve how well nutrients are absorbed from your food. As I've mentioned before, chewing really well is an important one. Eating a good variety of food is another (avoid a mono-diet). Juicing (veggie juices) can also help.

I tried a whole food approach for quite a while, without supplementation, and it wasn't enough for me--but I was very unwell at the time. I had to add supplements before I started to make any progress. In fact, after everything corrected, I stopped taking supplements and went back to whole foods only, and found that several minerals in my blood dropped back down well below normal. So for me, I need to continue certain supplements even today.

One issue with using whole foods alone is that there can be considerable
variation in the mineral content of your food. Also, certain types of food are good sources for certain minerals; if you eliminate those foods from your diet, it can be a challenge to get enough of the associated minerals. For example, molybdenum is present in beans; if you don't eat beans, it can be difficult to get enough.

Of course, if you're healthy and live in good environment, I don't think
this is an issue. Paleo people certainly didn't need supplements to survive and thrive.

Mineral absorbtion and transdermal magnesium

I don't have first-hand experience with transdermal magnesium (Mg). However, many substances are absorbed by the skin and make their way into the blood--including things like formaldehyde from clothes sizing, fire retardant from kids nightclothes (required by law!), perfumes, etc--so it seems reasonable that Mg could be absorbed that way, particularly if it was in an oil-based carrier (although the carrier would be absorbed too). However, the skin is also a natural barrier, so it doesn't absorb most substances very easily or in large quantities (though there are exceptions, such as DMSO).

The gut, on the other hand, has a much larger surface area than the skin, and readily absorbs nutrients that come into contact with it. I am therefore skeptical that Mg applied to the skin would be absorbed any better than Mg when you ingest it. As a technology, transdermal is great for compounds that you want to be absorbed slowly over a period time or in very small doses. But the body needs a fair amount of Mg every day, and of course even more when you're deficient.

[[MORE]]In addition, the gut provides a safety factor that's not present with transdermal (or IV) administration: if you get too much, the body will get rid of it, one way or the other. This isn't as big a deal with Mg as it is with other minerals. Too much copper, for example, when given by IV, can be fatal; but the gut acts as a safety valve and tends to help prevent copper poisoning by causing you to vomit if you accidentally ingest too much. The gut wall can also alter the extent to which certain minerals are absorbed or not absorbed, depending on your current health needs.

I'm not aware of any studies about how long it takes to correct deficiencies, although I imagine they must exist; this is a well-known phenomena in the field of Environmental Medicine. From a theory perspective, keep in mind that many mineral absorption / transport
mechanisms are active -- that is, rather than relying on a concentration gradient to cause them to be absorbed, they have to be actively carried into the body by a transport system of some kind (ion pumps, ion channels, etc).

Another issue is that many minerals serve their ultimate functions in the body by being at the center of an enzyme: zinc, molybdenum, Mg and selenium, for example. Enzymes are complex proteins that actually have to be grown--so it's not a matter of just having some mineral ions floating around in a big soup. Those ions have to be captured and an enzyme has to be grown around them. If you don't have enough of certain minerals, then the associated enzymes are not created in the same amounts as they would be otherwise.

When you're deficient in certain enzymes, it can put a load on others, causing the body to divert more resources in certain directions, and away from the production of other enzymes. Also, certain health conditions or environmental factors--such as leaky gut, candidiasis, food allergies, celiac disease, chronic fatigue (low ATP) and exposure to toxins--can interfere with the absorption of minerals and other nutrients.

The combination of the issues above can conspire to make it difficult for some combinations of mineral deficiencies to correct, and one deficiency can slow down the correction of another. In my case, I found my deficiencies tended to correct one at a time over a period of many months, rather than all at once, even though I always supplemented with everything I was low in.

Glutathione deficiency

I suspect that glutathione (GSH) deficiency is relatively common in modern society. Although the body will create GSH, it needs the sulphur-containing amino acid cysteine in order to do so. Unfortunately, sulphur intake, including cysteine, tends to be fairly low with modern diets. Since GSH is involved with many detoxification reactions, it also gets consumed much more quickly now than in the past, given our regular exposure to things like pesticides.

In addition, in order for GSH to be used properly by the body, the mineral selenium (Se) is required. Se is present in GSH peroxidase, one function of which is to eliminate peroxides such as hydrogen peroxide. Se is also often low in the diet, particularly in certain regions with soils that are naturally low in Se, such as Finland and New Zealand. Low levels of Se in the blood are a well-documented risk factor for cancer.

Just because the chemical pathways exist in the body doesn’t mean that nutrients or their co-factors are being made in the quantity needed. Also, supplementation of the substance itself (such as GSH, which is largely destroyed in the stomach) is often not the best way to address the problem; specific precursors such as cysteine or Se may be much more effective. Getting these precursors through diet is the ideal for the long-term, diet alone may not be enough to correct or even prevent deficiencies (depending on where you live and the source and quality of your food).

More about what "Paleo" means to me

For me, Paleo is not about Paleolithic food or lifestyle reenactment. I enjoy my modern lifestyle very much. There are certain Neolithic foods that I think are proper and healthy--dairy, for example. I also think it’s a good idea to apply scientific reasoning on top of what we know about the way our ancestors ate. In other words, there may be big difference between a diet based on Paleolithic food reenactment and one that is oriented toward optimal health.

One thing that Taubes (Good Calories, Bad Calories) and others have clearly shown is the idea that minimizing insulin levels and insulin resistance is extremely important for long-term health. “High fat Paleo” is one way to accomplish that (it’s not just carbs that cause insulin production; protein does, too).

[[MORE]]In terms of evolutionary reasoning, there were many sources of fat in the Paleolithic world. In addition to the larger animals that Monica mentioned, Paleolithic people also ate the entire animal, including the marrow, skin and the brain, which are fatty. I have no doubt that bird eggs have been consumed by man for ages, and egg yolks are fatty. In fact, many birds are themselves reasonably fatty. Some indigenous peoples consider grubs to be a delicacy, and they are fatty. As a dense calorie source and something that’s normally very tasty and satiating, it wouldn’t surprise me if Paleo people were attracted to fat over protein.

I also don’t think that the exact diet of Paleolithic people is well-known enough or was consistent enough for it to be the sole foundation of what we eat today. Personally, I would rather have my diet be a Paleo-inspired, but science-driven approach.

Magnesium testing and supplementation

Several studies have shown that most people these days are magnesium (Mg) deficient. However, diagnosing and treating those deficiencies is tricky.

The red blood cell (RBC )Mg test is probably the best "easy" test. Unfortunately, a normal result isn't enough to rule out a deficiency.

The Gold Standard in magnesium testing is the Magnesium Loading Test. The process involves having an IV containing a known amount of Mg, and
measuring 24-hr urine Mg before and after the IV. Using those numbers, you can calculate how much Mg the body held onto, and based on that amount, you can tell if you're deficient or not. Since an IV is costly and time consuming, most docs fall-back to the RBC Mg test if you're lucky, or the plasma test if not. The plasma test is one of the least reliable, most misleading tests around (plasma contains only about 0.3% of total body Mg).

[[MORE]]The reason the blood tests aren't very accurate is because blood is only store of Mg in the body -- it's also present in bones, muscle and other tissues.

After working through massive frustration with doctors on this issue over many years, my solution was self-experimentation. Here are a few things I've learned:

-- Mg oxide and Mg carbonate are pretty much useless when it comes to
correcting deficiencies
-- Time-release Mg chloride tablets work pretty well ("Slow Mag"), but take a long time
-- Liquid Mg chloride works faster than the tablets, but can cause GI upset and headaches because it gets into the body quickly (take with food and in divided doses)
-- The Mg chelates also work well, particularly Mg glycinate and Mg aspartate; orotate and taurate are also good
-- Mg citrate, although not as well absorbed as the chelates, also works well because it can be taken in a higher dose (1 tsp to 1 tbsp at a time), such as with "Natural Calm" (my current favorite form of supplementation)
-- Dark green veggies are a great source of Mg in food (chlorophyll uses Mg in a way that's analogous to how hemoglobin uses iron); chocolate is also a good source
-- Some medications and health conditions can cause the kidneys to leak Mg (where you excrete more than normal); hyperglycemia (high blood sugar) is one way that can happen
-- Something like 80% of the population is Mg deficient
-- Mg is used by over 300 enzymes in the body, and is required in order for muscles to relax
-- High calcium intake can interfere with Mg absorption
-- Common symptoms of Mg deficiency: high blood pressure, asthma, tension headaches, muscle cramps, constipation, anxiety, and depression