A Guide to Nutrition
By Ryan Heeney / February 18th, 2022
First, I strongly encourage you to not just trust anything you will read here. These opinions are a result of my own research and experimentation. I think it’s wise to collect information from many different sources then compare, contrast and come to your own conclusions.
There are a lot of things I will mention that seem unconventional or go against the current state of mainstream nutrition advice and I wanted to put things into context on why I might have certain opinions.
Like with many other things, there are many layers of importance when it comes to nutrition. I think experts and many people in the health industry get lost in the details and can’t seem to grasp the bigger picture. They can’t see the forest for the trees.
Vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, protein, fat, etc., are all very important pieces of the puzzle, but they are just that—pieces to the puzzle.
In nutrition, there is a bigger picture than just these pieces we often hear about. If we want to get the most out of the nutrition we put in our bodies everyday, we have to zoom out past vitamins; past minerals; past protein, fat and carbohydrate; until we have zoomed out and can fully view the picture of nutrition in its entirety. That’s when we get to the “master of everything” in the body. The master of everything ultimately controls our mood, our immune function, our digestion, our gut, how much fat we burn, how much muscle we have, how clear our skin is, how young our skin stays as we age, how our heart functions, how our liver functions, how our brain functions as we age—it controls it all. It’s the master of everything.
It is the metabolism.
The Metabolic Lifestyle uses strategies to increase the metabolism in many different ways, but I think nutrition (the food we put in our bodies every single day) is one of the most important factors.
But there are levels of importance when talking about nutrition.
Each level sits on top of the one before it. The higher you go up this “ladder” the more important the levels become—each level depending more and more on the one above it until we get to the top. The metabolism sits above all functions and processes that occur in the body
It’s also important to realize that each level affects one another going both upstream and downstream, the one above affects the one below, and so on.
I will not touch on every term listed in the graphic below in this post. This article’s specific purpose is an attempt to frame the way I believe nutrition should be thought of in an organizational and hierarchical sense, but eventually I will attempt to break down and define each term clearly as I put out more articles in the future.
While this hierarchy is not set in stone or found in the literature, it is based on my opinion from my own knowledge and research:
The first caveat I’d like to mention pertaining to the graphic above is that the terms “oxidative” and “glycolytic” in the metabolism category represent two “modes” of metabolism. There are other synonyms or terms that can mean the same “mode” of metabolism, but I chose these two terms because of the context of this article. “Efficient vs stressed” or “glucose burning vs fat burning” can be two other ways of describing the dichotomy of the same two modes the metabolism may be in.
A second caveat is that while the last 3 rows (macronutrients, micronutrients and phytochemicals) of the “ladder” is truly what is meant when nutrition is talked about in a classical sense, the two rows above those (the hormones and the metabolism), while not typically talked about among the mainstream nutrition crowd, must be factored in when talking about nutrition.
Again, these levels of importance are of my own opinion, but the main point of the visual above is when talking about a certain flavanoid, vitamin, etc., I will always do so with the metabolism in mind as a greater context. Remember, it is the ability of the cell to produce energy (ATP) that rules all in my opinion. Or to put simply it is “the metabolism” that rules all. I go into depth in this concept in my previous article which you can read here.
To make a little more sense of this and put these “levels of importance” into perspective, imagine you want to build a house…
Growing up as the son of a home builder and spending a lot of time around home construction, I know that the first and most important part of the home building process is laying a solid foundation. If a good, solid foundation is not first established for the house to sit on, you’ll find that the rest of the house will eventually fall apart. Without a solid foundation, what happens when you get that first big rainstorm and water floods the surrounding muddy area?
Unfortunately you are going to find that your new house is most likely sinking and sliding into a bed of wet mud. At this point it’s not going to matter what color the bedroom walls are painted, or whether the light fixtures are brass or polished nickel. A house without a solid foundation will not be a livable house at all.
But aren’t the color of the bedroom walls still important?
Yes, but it’s relative. Again, first you lay a good foundation—then we can talk about which color we can paint the walls.
How about a different example… let’s say you want to race cars competitively:
If you’re in the business of racing cars, obviously you want your car to win the race. So you and a team set out to plan and strategize at how to beat all the other cars you will be racing against.
Now imagine you and your team having your first team meeting and all your team wants to talk about is the tread pattern on the tires. Or how about what brand of spark plugs they want you to use. While this is all somewhat important in it’s own right, what the focus should be first and foremost is the engine. If two Corvettes are racing and one has an engine with 300 horsepower and the other has an engine with 800 horsepower—will it matter what type of tire tread the Corvette with the 300 horsepower has?
No.
The Corvette with the 800 horsepower is going to win every single time no matter what the tread on the tires looks like.
While you might think this is all obvious, this is what the current state of nutrition advice is like. I often hear nutritionists or “health gurus” obsess over the flavanoid content of a food without paying attention to (or most likely having no knowledge of ) the importance of metabolism. In mainstream areas of health and nutrition, much of what you are hearing about is only the tread pattern on the tires with hardly a mention of the “engine”. I believe it is wise to focus on the big picture first, then whittle down to the details.
Like in the previous article, let’s quickly clarify exactly what “metabolism” means.
When most people hear “metabolism”, they might think of that person they knew growing up with the “high metabolism” that could eat whatever they wanted and not gain a pound. While that is an aspect of what a high metabolism is, the true meaning of metabolism is the rate at which our cells produce energy in the form of ATP. The faster and more efficiently cells produce energy, the better they are at their job and the better shape the cell will be in.
The functioning of the cell is so crucial because at the end of the day it is nothing but cells that make up every single part of our living tissue.
Cells make up tissue, tissue make up organs, and organs make up the organism. Our heart, brain, skin, liver, pancreas, muscle, thyroid gland, thymus, stomach, intestines, and so on… are all made up of trillions of cells. The functioning of these cells dictate how your organs function, and how your organs function ultimately determine how well the organism (you) functions.
The rate at which a cell can produce energy (cellular respiration) indicates how well the cell is functioning, and that is the true definition of a high metabolism. When the metabolism is high, all of the processes of the human body will be optimal.
We can optimize our metabolism in many ways, but how can we do that in the context of nutrition?
Like in the Corvette example, we can have all sorts of different sized engines for our vehicle depending on our lifestyle. These different sizes are on a spectrum. We can have a very small and inefficient engine (a slow and stressed metabolism) all the way up to a very powerful and efficient engine (a fast and efficient metabolism).
Using nutrition, how can we get our metabolism to run like the 800 horsepower engine, rather than the slower and more inefficient 300 horsepower engine?
Well, because of something called the Randle cycle, we know our cells have a preference to burn either glucose (sugar) or fatty acids (fat) for fuel, but never both at the same time. Cells will only burn one or the other. Nothing in biology is typically 100% one way or the other, but the cell’s preference to use either glucose or fat when saturated with one or the other is pretty close.
Below is the Randle cycle in different format:
It might look complicated, but really all this diagram is showing is the metabolism of glucose (in green) and fatty acids or “beta oxidation” (in blue) and how they compete for their chance to be oxidized in the cell for fuel (energy). The diagram is not a perfect real time representation because remember—a cell cannot oxidize both glucose and fatty acids at the same time.
An important distinction that needs to be made is that glucose and fatty acids can be brought into the cell at the same time, but they cannot be oxidized (or used for fuel) at the same time.
It’s also worth mentioning that a specific cell is not stuck in one mode or the other and can be quite flexible depending on the circumstances. For example, when your muscles are not being exercised and are at rest they prefer to oxidize fat (and do so efficiently), but when they are in the middle of a high intensity exercise, like say lifting a heavy weight for a brief period of time, they will burn glucose.
Ideally in the context of an efficient metabolism, your muscles will be burning fat at rest and the remainding tissue (your organs) will be burning glucose. For simplicity’s sake in this article, I will not make that distinction every time I mention either “mode” of metabolism and instead refer to the states of being as either “glucose burning” or “fat burning”.
There are a few factors that determine whether a cell will burn either glucose or fatty acids, but one of the biggest is simply whichever one is of greater abundance of in the bloodstream.
If there are enough fatty acids present in the blood stream, even the cells that compose the organs will prefer to burn fat. When these cells are burning fat, the oxidation of glucose will be inhibited at every step, especially at the step above labeled “PDH” in the diagram above (which stands for pyruvate dehydrogenase). Conversely, if there is enough glucose present in the bloodstream, fatty acid oxidation will be inhibited at every step as well. Again, this is the Randle cycle at work.
Put simply, if we have more fat in our blood our cells will burn fat and if we have more glucose in our blood our cells will burn glucose.
So I want my cells to “burn fat” right?
Nope. And I know that may be confusing to hear at first, but let me try to break that down further.
Again, in an ideal situation you want your muscles burning fat for fuel (which they do at rest and do so healthfully and efficiently) and you want the rest of your tissue (your organs) burning glucose for fuel.
Current “health gurus” who are cheerleaders for the “Keto Diet” and “Carnivore Diet” would like you to believe you want all to most of your cells burning fat for fuel. Which doesn’t sound so bad right? Sounds like if most of your cells are burning fat, you must be lean, in shape, and healthy—but this is not true.
It’s not only a recipe for disaster, but a recipe for disease. When your cells are burning primarily fatty acids for fuel, it is a sign that your body is stressed.
But what do I mean by stress?
I feel this is a very important concept in health. In the context of metabolism, the word stress is not necessarily referring to emotional stress (although that can be an actual stressor to the physical system). When I use the word stress I’m referring to anything that disrupts the cell’s ability to produce ATP (energy).
Common sources of stress can be anything from lack of adequate carbohydrate in the diet, missing a couple meals during the day, a large french fry from McDonald’s, lack of sleep, intermittent fasting, not getting enough calcium, lack of vitamin A, pulling an all nighter, a bad breakup, a lack of sunshine, etc., etc. While that might seem like a very broad list of things that can stress our system, it’s because it really is that wide-ranging.
Anytime we encounter any of those stresses and we don’t have enough glucose or oxygen on hand to deal with that physical stressor, energy must be provided in some way. The body will begin releasing stress hormones to liberate fat from our fat stores into our blood stream to meet the cell’s demand. These are the “stress associated hormones” found in the nutrition hierarchy graphic above. This is our emergency lever.
Why does our body burn fatty acids for fuel at all if it’s so bad?
Well it’s not actually bad. Short term it’s a lifesaver. What’s bad is when we do it chronically over weeks, months and years—and unfortunately lots of people are in this mode long-term. Short-term, the fat burning metabolism is there for us when we don’t have adequate glucose to burn.
When fat is liberated into the bloodstream and is begun to be oxidized for fuel, our body gets the message that there must be a lack of food in the surrounding environment and our body goes into emergency mode. Lack of food means it’s time to conserve energy and turn down the metabolism. For all our body knows, food is scarce and it’s time to slowdown our metabolic rate. What’s ends up hurting us is when we’re in this “emergency mode” for long periods of time. Stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol begin to break down our body for a continued source of fuel, set off our other stress hormones, turn the metabolism down further and increase the chances for disease.
The other main factor that disrupts the cells ability to use glucose is the state the mitochondria is in. If the mitochondria has been damaged over time by various environmental factors (including stress), it will not function how it’s supposed to and ATP (energy) will not be produced sufficiently.
Okay but why exactly is burning fat for fuel so bad? What is happening at the level of the cell?
To understand that, we have to get into a little biochemistry and the actual process of metabolism. It might look confusing at first, but if you stick with it I think you will see it is really not as complicated as it appears.
Below are the two possible pathways for glucose…
If there are too many fatty acids are in the blood or the mitochondria is damaged, glucose can take one path. If conditions are right, and there is enough glucose in the blood, glucose can take a different path. Both paths are shown below:
Again, as with most of diagrams so far it looks like there’s a lot going on, but once you become familiar with the steps things begin to look less intimidating.
First, I’ll briefly describe what happens when there are low levels of fatty acid in the blood, sufficient glucose, and the mitochondria is in good shape.
When glucose enters the cell, the first stage of metabolism is glycolysis. This stage turns the glucose into something called pyruvate (or pyruvic acid) which you can see below. Pyruvate then travels from the cytosol (outside the mitochondria) into the mitochondria and is converted into Acetyl-CoA by an enzyme called “pyruvate dehydrogenase”. Pyruvate dehydrogenase is not shown in the visual above but it’s really the point at which there is a fork in the road. Here glucose will be sent through to the next step or will be sent the more harmful route—but I’ll get to that in a moment.
If the pyruvate is given the go ahead it’s sent to the second step, the Krebs cycle.
After the Krebs cycle, the third and final step is electron transport chain. ATP (energy), the very beneficial carbon dioxide (I’ll get to why it's so beneficial) and water are produced here.
Finally the glucose has been burned or “oxidized” for fuel, hence the term “oxidative metabolism” in the top row of the nutrition ladder.
Just to recap, the three stages are:
Glycolysis
The Kreb’s Cycle
Electron Transport
You can see this whole process outlined in blue in the diagram below:
Below is a more simplified version of the same process:
Besides carbon dioxide and water being produced, a net of 32 ATP are produced during the electron transport stage coming to 36 ATP for whole process of aerobic respiration.
Why is carbon dioxide such a good thing?
The adequate production of carbon dioxide is crucial because oxygen actually requires it to be used by the cell and vice versa. Without enough carbon dioxide, oxygen will not be able to be used by the cell (along with glucose) and an inadequate amount of energy will be produced. This relationship between carbon dioxide and oxygen is due to something called the “Bohr effect”. I believe this effect to be the “nuts and bolts” for a high functioning metabolism.
Carbon dioxide also stimulates the biogenesis of new mitochondria (which is why athletes will train at high altitudes or sleep in altitude chambers before big sporting events to improve athletic performance). Because of the biogenesis from increased carbon dioxide, you now have more mitochondria per unit of space (and denser mitochondria), meaning you can now produce more ATP (energy). This in turn creates more carbon dioxide, and the positive cycle improving your metabolism continues upward. One other important aspect of carbon dioxide is the fact that it’s the main inhibitor of lactic acid (which detrimental effects I will get to in a moment).
Now on the other hand, if we are burning mainly fatty acids for fuel through beta oxidation because of the reasons mentioned above, the cell will send the pyruvate (derived from glucose that entered the cell) through the route of a process called anaerobic respiration. Here oxygen will not be present and things are a bit different in this scenario. While the cell is burning, glucose can in fact enter the cell but not make it past the step of glycolysis, hence the term “glycolytic metabolism” in the top row of the nutrition ladder. Here, most the work is not done in the mitochondria like above, and is happening outside the mitochondria, in the cytosol of the cell. This anaerobic metabolism is highlighted in red in the diagram below:
Here is a more simplified version of the same process:
Instead of carbon dioxide being produced, lactic acid (lactate) is. Lactic acid is a problem for many reasons.
First, overproduction of lactic acid is by far and away the biggest reason your body may be “acidic”. Trying to change your pH to be more alkaline by eating certain foods in the face of heavy lactic acid production is like trying to put out a 5-alarm fire with a water hose.
Lactic acid is also the fatiguing effect that you can feel at the gym. This signal is because the build up of lactic acid is one of the primary signals to a cell that the cell is under stress and that things are not going well. If this build up continues for too long the Warburg Effect (the overproduction of lactic acid even in the presence of oxygen) will take place. This is when the cell begins to dismantle it’s entire mitochondria and will eventually lead the cell to remain at a state of nothing but glycolysis.
Second is hypoxia. Hypoxia is when there is not enough oxygen in the tissues to sustain healthy function of the tissue. It also has an angiogenic effect (the formation of new blood vessels), which can lead to proliferation of any existing cancer.
But that’s not all that’s going on…
When our body burns fat for fuel there is a substance being chronically released into our bloodstream that in my opinion is the biggest dietary contributor to chronic disease worldwide above all else.
PUFA.
Short for polyunsaturated fatty acids, PUFA is the big, gigantic elephant in the room.
While the intention of this post is to put the whole of nutrition and the metabolism into perspective, this particular type of fat plays such a big role in our metabolism and health I feel it has to be talked about.
Polyunsaturated fatty acids are so harmful to our body and metabolism because as a fat, PUFA is very, very unstable.
What does this mean and why does it matter?
Back to a bit of biochemistry… to understand polyunsaturated fat we should first understand the two other types of fat—saturated and monounsaturated.
A saturated fat is when all the bonds in hydrocarbon chain between carbon atoms are single bonds. All the carbons are then also “saturated” with hydrogen atoms (hence the name “saturated”), seen below:
A monounsaturated fat is when one of the bonds (hence the name “mono”) between two carbon atoms in the hydrocarbon chain is a double bond, seen below:
A polyunsaturated fat is a fatty acid in which two or more of the bonds (hence the name “poly”) between carbon atoms in the hydrocarbon chain are double bonds, seen below:
So why do double bonds matter? Well double bonds, contrary to what the name might suggest, are actually more vulnerable to being broken apart by oxygen. Once oxygen enters the fatty acid chain, the fatty acid becomes oxidized. Oxidation leads to free radicals that cause damage to cells, proteins and DNA. The cellular damage that free radicals cause can manifest both internally (in the form of damaged organs/glands) and even externally (in the form of quickly or prematurely aging skin). The more double bonds a fatty acid has, the more likely it will be susceptible to attack by an oxygen molecule. This oxidation of polysunsatruated fats is known as lipid peroxidation.
If you think about this in terms of cooking oils, this is why the highly unsaturated oils must be kept in the fridge and need to be in a dark, closed container. These oils react quickly to heat and oxygen. While on the other hand, a very saturated fat like coconut oil can be left uncovered at room temperature for weeks.
The way that heat and oxygen in the air causes the unsaturated cooking oil to go rancid in our kitchen is the same way heat and the oxygen interacts with the unsaturated oils in our blood from ingesting the oils in our diet—both sources of unsaturated fat becoming “rancid” because of oxidation.
Polyunsaturated fats also:
Damage the cells in your pancreas that produce insulin; severely degrading the body’s blood sugar handling system. For those with high blood sugar, doctors typically recommend decreasing sugar intake. I believe it makes more sense to fix the root cause and remove PUFA/free fatty acids in the bloodstream. If there’s a hole in your boat, don’t think of new ways to rid of the water, just plug the hole.
Can harm the liver, which plays a major role in detoxification of the body.
Can impair digestion.
Turn down the metabolism like nothing else.
Are closely linked to age spots (also known as liver spots or age pigment formation). They get their brown pigment from something called lipofuscin. Which is a waste material formed from polyunsaturated fat and iron. Also, this complicates sun exposure when having a diet high in PUFA. UV light can cause damage to unsaturated fatty acid molecules in our skin, producing free radicals and contributing to photoaging (premature aging of the skin).
Cause general inflammation of the skin and can be linked to blemishes and cystic like acne (at age 13 I believe this was the type of fat that was giving me my skin issues).
For being a such a mainstream publication, Harper's Bazaar had a surprisingly good article on polyunsaturated fat which expands on the points above which you can read here:
https://www.harpersbazaar.com/beauty/diet-fitness/a10965/pufa-free-diet/
While I believe a majority of the rest of the mainstream health industry has failed on the topic of polyunsaturated fats and the disastrous effects they have on health, there have been a few other voices in the campaign against PUFA that have tried to speak out.
One of those other people was Fred Kummerow PhD, pictured below. He was a scientist from the University of Illinois and was one of the early voices against polyunsaturated fat. He is actually the man responsible for getting trans fats banned by the FDA in 2018. He had said how glad he was that people realized the dangers of trans fats but was frustrated that the dangerous nature of polyunsaturated fats didn’t get the same negative attention.
During his life he also led a campaign in favor of cholesterol containing foods and was outspoken about his disagreements with the notion dietary cholesterol was harmful. Here is Dr. Kummerow at 94 years old. He ate red meat several times a week and drank whole milk daily. He lived to be 102 years old and passed away in 2017.
An interesting thing I noticed about the picture above was that at 94 years old he had virtually no age spots and his skin looked really well for someone his age. I suspect avoiding polyunsaturated fats did his skin well.
This article on Dr. Kummerow is also very interesting and goes into his story a bit more. He mentions what he believes to be the true cause of heart disease to be, oxidized LDL due to the consumption of polyunsaturated fats (which I completely agree with) and also mentions some of the other detrimental effects of polyunsaturated fat and it’s connections to heart disease. At the time it was written he was 99 years old and still working.
Okay, I get that polyunsaturated fat is not what mainstream science has told us it is, so just don’t eat PUFA then right?
Well, that’s step one but I wish it were only that easy. The problem is, most of us carry lots of PUFA in our tissues from years of buildup from a “standard Western diet”. Once we go into fat burning mode, these polyunsaturated fatty acids are liberated into the bloodstream and the processes described above will occur. So my best advice is to keep your body as “stress free” as possible.
But will I lose body fat if I’m not primarily burning fat for fuel?
Yes. With a higher, more efficient glucose burning metabolism, more thyroid hormone being produced and more muscle mass due to optimizing androgens and other “youth associated” hormones you should be burning even more fat. With an increased metabolism the proportion of fat to glucose being burned will be less, but the total amount of fat being burned will actually increase because the total energy expenditure (calories burned) has now increased. Hopefully the graphic below will help you to visualize what I mean:
Note: even someone who is “fat adapted” like the bar on the left and eating entirely fat and protein without ingesting carbohydrate will still have some glucose floating around. Gluconeogenesis could be one of those reasons, and is a process in the body which can turn it’s own tissue or dietary protein that is consumed into glucose—this could be one possible factor in this case. I think this fact also illustrates how important the body views glucose, going to many lengths to ensure it’s presence.
On the other hand, someone who ingests enough carbohydrate and is a carbohydrate (glucose) burner will “spare” this protein that would have instead been used in the inefficient process of gluconeogenesis.
And while these numbers are not from actual studies or literature, I believe they are what you could reasonably suspect from the reasons given above of a more efficient metabolism. The graph above is merely a visual to illustrate the point trying to be made.
Here are some real world examples of what I’m talking about:
Below is a gentleman named Max who raised his metabolism over a period of 6 months and lost a couple of pounds by eating 3,500 calories a day on average. He averaged about 530 grams of sugar a day mainly coming from fruit. He also ate 110 grams of carbohydrate a day from starch. This means he was averaging about 640 grams of carbohydrates (2560 calories from carbohydrate alone) per day. The other 1,000 calories came from protein and fat. He engaged in moderate exercise during this time (weightlifting 3 times per week). He lost a couple of pounds during this 6 month time period and now maintains a weight of around 143 pounds at 5 foot 4.
Another good example is Danny Roddy. He is a prominent nutrition researcher over at DannyRoddy.com and averages about a full cup of white sugar (sucrose) per day in addition to other sugars from fruit and fruit juice. He maintains a very lean physique and you can find a great video from him here:
Also, an interesting group of people which this subject pertains to as well are “fruitarians” who only ingest fruit as their daily diet. They are known to ingest extremely large amounts of calories of sugar from fruit in excess of 3,000+ calories and are almost always very lean.
To clarify the concept a little further I’ll use cars again as an example…
Say you own a car and want to make it faster; so you take out the engine and replace it with a much, much larger engine… wouldn’t that just weigh the car down and end up making it slower? Well, it will definitely make the car weigh more which should slow it down but since we now have a much larger engine with more horsepower the heavier car is now much faster. The same applies when switching from a fat burning metabolism to a glucose burning metabolism—the proportion of fat being burned is lower compared to glucose, but the overall amount of fat being burned is now higher. Remember, increased metabolism means increased muscle mass and since muscle cells like to burn fat at rest, this new extra muscle will cause the body to burn even more fat. For good overall health, one reason to have adequate muscle mass is that muscle cells will “dispose” of dietary fat very efficiently. Also, the more efficient the metabolism, the healthier the liver will be—and the healthier the liver is the more effectively it can excrete fat as well.
So just to recap, we want our muscles to burn fat, the liver to excrete fat as well, and the rest of our organs to burn glucose. But when we have both our organs and muscle oxidizing fat, because of the Randle cycle mentioned above, a very dangerous environment conducive to disease will begin to manifest.
Now you can see why some of the popular diets low-carb diets might not be such a good idea. Most of these diets are just finding more and more creative ways to do the same thing—stress the body into burning fatty acids for fuel. While burning fat as fuel and turning down your metabolism can often appear to have fairly quick results, two factors often at play here are a loss of water weight (since the oxidative metabolism is no longer producing water as a byproduct) and a loss of muscle. The number on the scale will change, and you might see some superficial changes, but in my opinion the price you will be paying will be great. I think the quick results are what keep these diet fads popular, but long term it is devastating to our bodies.
Remember the earlier example I gave about building a house on wet mud with no foundation? Let’s look at some popular fads at the moment through the metabolic lens.
Intermittent fasting?… nope, just an illusion of short term results with no foundation.
The Keto diet?… nope, just the same.
Low-carb?… nope, just the same.
Avocado toast and a green smoothie?… big nope and definitely just the same.
But hasn’t the ketogenic diet shown benefits in children with epilepsy?
Yes, but the fact that a diet which helps relieve symptoms in a small, specific portion of people that have a very specific condition does not mean it is the right diet for all.
How do I ensure that my body is in an efficient metabolic state with nutrition and eating habits, instead of a stressed, inefficient metabolic state?
Good ways to ensure your organs are burning glucose instead of the “stressed fat burning mode of metabolism” are:
Minimizing polyunsaturated fat in the diet.
Having enough carbohydrate with protein.
Consuming enough protein from gelatin.
Consuming adequate sugar throughout the day from fruit, fruit juice and other good sources of sugar.
Opting for fruit, fruit juices and other sugars over starchy carbohydrates.
Not skipping meals, especially if you are coming from a low metabolic state.
Consuming adequate calcium.
Maintaining adequate sodium in diet (yes you read that right).
Eating saturated fat until satiation but not overdoing it. The fat you do consume should be from saturated sources like coconut oil, dairy, and ruminant animal meat (like beef, bison or goat).
Keeping the bowel “clean” with the right fibers.
A T3/T4 combination thyroid medication through a trained physician (it is thought that we actually did get quite a bit of thyroid hormone in our diets via the thyroid gland during primitive days when consuming the whole animal in more traditional ways of eating).
While the list above might seem like a random smattering of things, as I continue to put out articles I hope to quickly put them into context on why they are important with a high, efficient metabolism in mind. But if you don’t feel like waiting, the “resources” page on my website can give you a shortcut as to the “why” for the factors above.
Of all these things to keep the metabolism in working order, I think keeping polyunsaturated fat low, getting on a T3/T4 combination thyroid medication through a trained physician and keeping the liver full of stored glucose (glycogen) can often have the quickest and most impactful results.
While keeping the liver’s glycogen stores full might seem like an odd factor to have on a list of what I think to be the most important, when the liver is full of glycogen it indicates that food (glucose) is abundant and the metabolism does not have to be turned down for emergency mode. Big picture what this indicates is that the surrounding environment is abundant and able to support life.
This ensures stress hormones are not released and free fatty acids will not have to be sent out into the blood stream for emergency fuel.
If you want to think of it in an evolutionary sense, being healthy is a result of food abundance and not of scarcity. In our current culture, it seems people are under the impression that food scarcity is the way to health—when in reality all this has been able to achieve is a lower number on the scale. While not having extremely large amounts of body fat is an aspect of good health, a low number on the scale is not necessarily synonymous with good health.
There’s even something called the “obesity paradox”, which is a paradox in which people who are slightly overweight tend to have longer lifespans than those who have BMI’s (body mass indexes) considered normal to underweight. In my opinion, probably the biggest factor at play here is that those who are slightly overweight will more likely have adequate muscle mass than those who are normal to underweight. Muscle mass has long been known to be a very important factor in those with longer lifespans. You can investigate further into this paradox in the links below:
https://www.hngn.com/articles/181772/20160223/obesity-paradox-new-study-reveals-yeast-cells.htm
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/1555137
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/healthy-weight-bmi-overweight
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2520627
It’s important to remember that lower mortality rates are found in those who are mildly overweight. Death rates begin to climb again after a certain BMI is crossed. Those who are morbidly obese and above will experience higher death rates than those who are considered “slightly overweight”(essentially forming a “U-curve” if you were to graph out BMI and lifespan).
The point I’m trying to drive home is that a mindset based on scarcity is not the way to good health in my opinion. Obviously you don’t want to overindulge to the point of morbid obesity, but when you’re not consuming PUFA, soy, resistant starches, etc., appetite is usually a very good barometer of what your body needs. Choosing the right foods and eating until your content (not worrying about amounts) is in my opinion the way to a happy, healthy metabolism and vitality.
For those who are too overweight, morbidly obese or otherwise in a lowered metabolic state, you might have to be a little cautious when adding carbohydrate (fruit, fruit juice or other types of sugar) into your diet. Opting to eat a lower-fat diet would be wise and starting with small amounts of fruit and fruit juice in the beginning and working your way up as you go may be a good way to go about losing weight. At this stage I’ve found that it is also essential you combine protein and carbohydrate at each meal as well. For example, if you have 2 eggs and a piece of cheese for breakfast—a glass of fruit juice and apple sauce would be a great way to add carbohydrate to your meal to balance your blood sugar.
For those who need to lose large amounts of body fat, the body is going to start off sluggish metabolically, but lowering your fat intake will help with this transition. 20-25% of your daily calories from fat, or possibly lower, might be good. Cronometer.com is an excellent, free website to help you get an idea of how much fat you are getting in your diet.
What benefits might I enjoy from increasing my metabolism through nutrition?
In my opinion, everything is optimized when increasing the metabolism but some examples could include:
Sleep
Digestion
Immune function
Heart health
Brain function and memory
Energy levels throughout the day
Libido
Mood
The entire aging process
Lifespan
Utilization of nutrients
Recovery from workouts
Body composition
Increased muscle mass
Skin tone and complexion
Improved skin, hair and nails
Okay I get the how beneficial an efficient metabolism is, but aren’t vitamins and minerals still important?
Yes they are absolutely essential, but when I make a recommendation for a certain food or nutrient I am making it based on the benefits it will have on all levels of nutrition.
For example, people now studying vitamin K are discovering how incredibly powerful this undervalued vitamin really is—but what they are also discovering is how very dependent vitamin K is on carbon dioxide to be properly utilized. If you’ll remember from earlier in the article, carbon dioxide is produced by cells when our metabolism is healthy (primarily burning glucose). To recommend vitamin K without giving consideration to what type of metabolism the person might be in is putting the details before the big picture. If your metabolism isn’t optimal and you aren’t producing enough carbon dioxide, there’s a good chance vitamin K is not going to be utilized as it should.
Note: While we’re on the topic of vitamin K… nutritionists, trainers, doctors, etc. will recommend things like “leafy greens” for vitamin K, but don’t consider how the vitamin K found in leafy greens will not be as nearly as bioavailable (partly because a lot of the nutrition in leafy greens are “trapped” within it’s cellulose) when considered against the bioavailability of the vitamin K found in something like beef liver or aged cheese. We have to remember we are not cows with a four-stomach ruminant digestive system and can’t extract vitamin K from plants like they can. Just because a nutrition label says there is “X” amount of nutrient in a food, doesn’t mean we can absorb that nutrient the same as from another food. Humans are small stomached, big brained mammals and it is this reason a certain diet suits us.
These are just small examples but there are thousands of examples just like this in which health authorities, practitioners, personal trainers and bloggers are seemingly lost.
Why does it seem like mainstream medicine and many health communities recommend almost the opposite general advice that you give?
I think there are a few answers to that question, but these are just my opinions:
Food industry money: In my opinion, the push of unsaturated oils onto American consumers is a great example of those with big money being the ones who dictate nutritional advice. Someone has to fund studies, and usually those with deepest pockets are the ones who do. America is a grain country and seed oils are a big business here. The corn industry is also big. Claims of high-fructose corn syrup’s superiority to sugar would make sense in a country whose biggest agricultural product is corn.
Funding studies, then picking and choosing what could help your business doesn’t seem like a scenario that’s too far-fetched in my opinion. When you check the background on studies that seem suspicious, a lot of the information is divulged in a way that is not all honest (in my opinion). For example, many studies claiming a “high saturated fat” diet was used, commonly only use about a third of saturated fat—while the other two-thirds is unsaturated. So while they’re not flat out lying, they’re being disingenuous at the same time.
This is the FDA food pyramid I grew up with in the 1990’s—although it still hasn’t changed much. 6-11 servings of starch didn’t make sense to me even as a kid and it still doesn’t today. I wonder if the American grain industry had any say in this?
Incompetence: A lot of studies and regimens are poorly done due to what I believe is just plain incompetence. Studies claiming sugar causes “fill in the blank” are often done giving their subjects meals with high-sugar and high-fat, and most of that fat usually comes from polyunsaturated fat or other unsaturated sources. As mentioned before, because of the Randle cycle, fatty acids of those types and those amounts do not mix well with sugar. I would expect a meal of high unsaturated fat and sugar to cause blood sugar issues. More true low-fat studies should start being done, but at the moment they really aren’t. While these might seem like the sneaky dishonest tricks mentioned above, you would be surprised how many people in nutrition arne’t aware of something like the Randle cycle.
To better understand what I mean, Kyle Mamounis, PhD gives some very interesting insights into the processes and methods in the health and nutrition world. Kyle is a researcher at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. His primary research interest is investigating the effects of fatty acids on energy balance regulation.
As Kyle mentions in the video, he routinely issues a challenge for anyone to find a paper in which a low fat, high carbohydrate diet caused someone to gain weight.
Note: when he says the word “PUFA” he is referring to polyunsaturated fat.
Reputations and careers: Many people’s professional lives are on the line and that can be an issue when a new idea comes along to challenge what they believe. In science, especially in a field like nutrition which is constantly changing and evolving I think this scenario is far too common. Imagine dedicating 30 years or more of your life to teaching a certain set of criteria only to have a study come out refuting your life’s work. While I imagine that can be a very difficult pill to swallow, it is also putting yourself above the truth.
Consider Ancel Keys, the man who pioneered and dedicated his life to the idea that dietary saturated fats caused heart disease. 43 years years after his well known “Time Magazine” cover—the June 2014 issue of Time seemed to do a complete reversal on their stance that saturated fat was some dietary boogeyman. Mainstream science seems to be doing a little backpedaling in other areas at the moment, but they seem to be doing it quietly.
In 2018 the FDA did in fact do a reversal on cholesterol, which you can read about here.
Slow Momentum: For the amount of time it takes a study to be planned and actually carried out (which can be years), then the period of time to have that study peer-reviewed, then accepted into a journal; this can take a decade when all is said and done. Eventually, some of these studies make a big enough impact in medicine that they are eventually taught in universities and classrooms.
But how long does it take once all is said and done?
While I have faith in the tried and true scientific method, it can be a very slow moving process. Due to nutrition’s complexity, sometimes it seems like it will take mainstream science 100 more years for things to get figured out.
While nutrition can be complex I believe it to be the foundation for much of our life. The learning process of understanding nutrition can be painful, but I believe gaining control of this area in life will pay big dividends. Everything in life is multilayered and nutrition is no different. In nutrition, just like in life, you must navigate yourself so that all layers you find yourself in are harmoniously stacked. In nutrition you must think about the metabolism, the hormones, the macronutrients, the micronutrients and the phytochemicals all within context to each other and their perceived importance. When everything is stacked correctly and you’re hitting each layer harmoniously, everything just seems to click.
Relevant studies and materials:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19531645
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14641007
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8960090
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7236r3t7
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30252284/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14559071/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0079683271900383
http://watcut.uwaterloo.ca/webnotes/Metabolism/TCAcycle.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4059105/
https://www.physiology.org/doi/abs/10.1152/ajpendo.1993.264.4.e504
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16732081
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27251151
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27886622
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9022144
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20797988
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/13990765/
https://www.spandidos-publications.com/ijmm/44/1/3?text=fulltext