Category Archives: Uncategorized

Should Our Dietary Fats Be More Saturated Or Unsaturated?

Posted on January 24, 2013 | 2 comments

The jury’s still out, but the editors at The Evolution and Medicine Review discuss dietary fat effects on gut microbiota and systemic inflammation.  The authors tend to favor unsaturated fats at this point.

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Who Is Silverlobster?

Posted on January 21, 2013 | 1 comment

My 14-year-old son is a budding artist.  His work is viewable and for sale at DeviantArt.  You can order prints of various sizes and quality, along with his art on cups and refrigerator magnets.  Thanks for taking a look.  Paul will get a kick out of the bump in page views whether you buy or not!

Some samples:

Wink!

Deadmau5 copy

Soaring eagle

Impressionist snake

REEEAOGH

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QOTD: Adam Smith on Economic Self-Interest

Posted on January 18, 2013 | 1 comment

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”

—Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations

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Paleo Diet is the Most Sought After

Posted on January 11, 2013 | 1 comment

According to Janet Helm, RD.

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Stephan Guyenet on “The Potato Diet”

Posted on December 19, 2012 | 6 comments

Dr. Guyenet has a recent post on The Potato Diet.  It caught my eye since I include potatoes in my version of the paleo diet.  He starts thusly:

In 2010, I wrote a series of blog posts on the health properties of potatoes.  The evidence showed that potatoes are non-toxic, filling per calorie, remarkably nutritious, and can be eaten as almost the sole source of nutrition for extended periods of time (though I’m not recommending this).

Follow all of

Rosemary Chicken (garnished with pico de gallo) and Rosemary Potatoes

Rosemary Chicken (garnished with pico de gallo) and Rosemary Potatoes

Dr. Guyenet’s links and you’re sure to learn something new about potatoes.

-Steve

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Could Acellular Carbohydrates Be the Cause of Obesity?

Posted on November 28, 2012 | 12 comments

Ivor Goodbody in a recent tweet reminded me of an interesting nutrition science article.  Ian Spreadbury hypothesizes that carbohydrate density of modern foods may be the cause of obesity.  Refined sugars and grains—types of acellular carbohydrates—are  particularly bad offenders.

Harvesting acellular carbs

These acellular carbs may alter our gut microorganisms, leading to systemic inflammation and leptin resistance, etc.  Our Paleolithic ancestors had little access to acellular carbohydrates.

Read more about it in “Comparison with ancestral diets suggests dense acellular carbohydrates promote an inflammatory microbiota, and may be the primary dietary cause of leptin resistance and obesity,” in Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome and Obesity: Targets and Therapy, 2012, vol. 5, pp. 175-189.

To reverse our modern obesity epidemic, we need better understanding of the underlying pathophysiology.

—Steve

PS:  For Spreadbury’s formal definition of acellular carbohydrates, see my long comment below.

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Artificial Sweeteners and the Paleoista

Posted on November 3, 2012 | 9 comments

Did you know babies under one year of age shouldn’t be given honey?  I saw that warning on a honey container recently and didn’t know why.  Honey may contain bacterial spores that cause botulism in the wee ones.

A pinch of salt helps reduce bitterness in coffee

Paleo diet aficionados can satisfy a sweet tooth with honey or fruit.  Unfortunately for people with diabetes, those items can spike blood sugars too high.  Honey, for instance, has 17 grams of carbohydrate in one tablespoon (15 ml), which is more carb than in a tablespoon of white granulated table sugar.

Most diabetics eating paleo-style will need some limit on consumption of honey and fruit.  Or they could take more diabetes drugs to control blood glucose elevations.  Again, unfortunately, we don’t know the long-term health effects of most of our diabetes drugs.

How about getting a sweet fix with artificial sweeteners?  Paleo purists would say “fuggedaboudit.”  In theory, that’s fine.  But many paleo followers with diabetes won’t forget about it.  They’ll use artificial sweeteners, aka sugar substitutes.

If you’re gonna use ’em, think about stevia.  It’s derived from a natural source, the leaves of a plant in South America.  Admittedly, our forebears in eastern Africa wouldn’t have had access to it 50,000 years ago.  After the plant has been processed, it’s certainly a highly refined product going against the grain of the paleo movement.  Furthermore, one of the stevia market leaders in U.S. (Truvia) is mixed with erythritol.  To help you feel better about the erythritol (a sugar alcohol), note that it is found naturally in some fruits.  Another stevia commercial product in the U.S. is Pure Via.

Dietitian Brenna at her Eating Simple blog reviewed sugar impostors in January, 2012.  She favored stevia over the others, at least for non-diabetics who were tempted.  Brenna also linked to a Mayo Clinic review of artificial sweeteners.

Note that sugar alcohols like erythritol have the potential to raise blood sugar levels.  They shouldn’t raise it as much as table sugar, however.  With regard to sugar alcohols, Dr. Richard K. Bernstein urges caution, if not total avoidance.  Use your meter to see how they effect you.

If you’re in the habit of using one or two teaspoons of honey to sweeten tea or coffee, you’re blood sugar levels should be more stable and manageable if you use stevia instead.  Dr. Bernstein gives the green light to stevia powder or liquid, along with saccharin tablets or liquid, aspartame tablets, and sucralose tablets, acesulfame-K, and neotame tablets.  Stevia is the only one close to “natural.”

Steve Parker, M.D.

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Quote of the Day

Posted on September 29, 2012 | Comments Off on Quote of the Day

“Frederick Douglass taught that literacy is the path from slavery to freedom. There are many kinds of slavery and many kinds of freedom, but reading is still the path.”

―Carl Sagan

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Smoked Paprika on Eggs?

Posted on September 1, 2012 | 2 comments

I’m glad eggs are on the paleo diet!  Love ’em.

Darya Pino suggests smoked paprika on fried eggs.  Not regular paprika, smoked.  Hope my local supermarket has it.  I got the fresh eggs—my chickens lay five a day, enough to share with the dogs now and then.

-Steve

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U.S. Diabetes Prevalence: 1935 to 2011

Posted on August 27, 2012 | 5 comments

From 1935 to 1996, the prevalence of diagnosed type 2 diabetes [in the U.S.] climbed nearly 765%.

765%—Wow!  This statistic is from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as cited in Increased Consumption of Refined Carbohydrates and the Epidemic of Type 2 Diabetes in the United States: an Ecologic Assessment, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2004, vol. 79, no.5, pp: 774-779.

I thought 765% might be a misprint, so I did some digging.  A similar figure is in DHHS Publication No. (PHS) 82-1232 published in 1981:

  • Diabetes prevalence rose from 0.4% of the population in 1935,  to 2.4% in 1979.

This is a six-fold increase.  The major part of the upward trend started in 1960.  Interestingly, that’s when corn syrup started working its way into our food supply.  Coincidence?  The authors of the Department of Human Services paper write:

Preliminary evaluation of these trends suggests that the change in the prevalence of known diabetes has resulted from improvements both in detection of diabetes among high-risk groups and in survivorship among persons with diabetes.

To me, it sounds like they weren’t considering an true increase in the number of new diabetes cases (i.e., incidence), but better detection of existing cases and improved longevity of existing patients (prevalence).  Incidence and prevalence are often confusing.  Wikipedia has a clarifying article.  These days, both incidence and prevalence of diabetes are greatly increased over 1935 levels.

In January, 2011, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the latest estimates for prevalence of diabetes and prediabetes.

  • 8.3% of the total U.S. population has either diagnosed or undiagnosed diabetes (earlier percentages in this post were for diagnosed cases only)
  • Nearly 27% of American adults age 65 or older have diabetes (overwhelmingly type 2)
  • 6% of the U.S. adult population has diagnosed diabetes (My calculation: Population in 2011 was 311 million; with 18.8 million diagnosed cases of diabetes, 7 million undiagnosed)
  • Half of Americans 65 and older have prediabetes
  • 11% of U.S. adults (nearly 26 million) have diabetes (overwhelmingly type 2)
  • 35% of adults (79 million) have prediabetes, and most of those affected don’t know it

Here’s a post about prevention of type 2 diabetes.

I suspect that overconsumption of concentrated sugars and refined starches (e.g., grains) has contributed to the prevalence of type 2 diabetes and overweight lately.  A paleo-style diet restricts those quite a bit, and therefore, could prevent some cases of diabetes.

Steve Parker, M.D.

PS: The paleo diet is also referred to as the Old Stone Age, Stone Age, hunter-gatherer, caveman, and ancestral diet.

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