There are a couple of these papers doing the rounds, I have also seen one that came out of New Zealand. They seem to have attracted a lot of interest. Not just the Guardian, they have been picked up and commented on by national TV and other newspapers. Interesting twist – it isn’t the bad stuff that kills you, it is the lack of the good, quite philosophical really.

Agreed, too much poor science gets published and you have to look at it very critically. if you are as old as I am you see the theories go round in circles. What struck me this time is the confirmation in one of the papers that you can’t trust statements like “contains whole grain” when the whole grain has been so thoroughly processed that it retains none of the qualities of wholegrain. They have summarised what I would have thought was blindingly obvious, you will probably live longer if you avoid processed foods and eat whole foods. Which is why most of what I eat is cooked from scratch by me. I do eat unhealthily on occasion, but I know that because I cooked it.

Wow there isn’t anything like a sugar rush? News to me because now that I generally avoid sugar I have felt the rush. For example when my daughter and I got a scope of ice cream and they doubled it because it was girls day. I ate a little too much. I started feeling a bit giddy, slightly dizzy and my head was buzzing.

If that wasn’t a sugar rush what was it? Still I enjoyed the treat, but I don’t do that every day or even week!

Hi LJ. I wouldn’t argue with any of that. It just seems to have missed an entire generation, and to be honest even though I know all that, I don’t do it as well as I should..

This is from an article titled: The 5 stages of Intermittent Fasting by Paige Jarreau
https://lifeapps.io/fasting/the-5-stages-of-intermittent-fasting/

The article is pretty cool if you want to read more details on each stage. I’ve summarized them below.

12 hours – metabolic state called Ketosis
18 hours – fat burning mode and generating significant ketones
24 hours – recycling old components & breaking down misfolded proteins linked to Alzheimers’
48 hours – growth hormone level is up to five times as high from when you began (this helps lean muscle mass) and reduces fat tissue accumulation.
58 hours – insulin has dropped to its lowest level (increasing insulin-sensitivity)
*Increased insulin-sensitivity is actually a good thing I’ll give more details below
72 hours – body breaks down old immune cells and is generating new ones!

*Increased insulin-sensitivity is what happens when we lower our insulin levels (which reduces inflammation and/or less insulin resistant, which is especially a good thing if you have a high risk of developing diabetes) and protects you from chronic diseases of again including cancer. (Wow)

Interesting stuff Rabette, some of it new to me. Can I add that fasting has an impact on the gut biome as well. In us we have bugs that eat our food when it is there, A second bug type doesn’t. After about 12-18 hours of no food they eat our gut lining, cleaning off the damaged cells and stimulating healthy ones. This is the argument for restricted time eating and is the reason I no longer eat breakfast and about once a month have a 2-3 day total fast, fluids only. What happens inside me became an area of serious interest a few years ago when I had colon cancer!

I don’t actually do any measuring when I am fasting so I have no idea about ketone or blood sugar levels. After perhaps the morning of day 2 I feel no hunger, although at normal meal times I may have the vague feeling that there is something I should be doing. Generally the feeling of well-being grows as I get deeper into the fast. There are no energy issues.

The above link to the article about ketogenic diet studies is interesting because it appears that the scientists were providing calorie restricted low energy methods as part of the strategy to promote ketone production in the body. I’m aware that a lot of ketogenic diets do recommend calorie control, however, the way I’ve been exploring and looking into recommends no caloric restriction and allows for as many fat grams as desired! The only protocol with regard to fat is to consume a minimum number of grams, which for my height of 170 cm is 176 per day!

As they say not new, at least to someone who has had bowel cancer, but useful reinforcement. Whilst the thrust was on eating fibre and avoiding processed meats, the almost afterthought comment “eating meat two or three times a week won’t do too much harm” was instructive of how attitudes to meat have changed. The Vegan movement is growing in strength here and, whilst not personally a follower, if I have to eat in a shopping Mall I have discovered that the Vegan options seem to be prepared to a higher standard with fewer anonymous ingredients. That is not enough to change the way I cook at home, where there are no anonymous ingredients, but I am coming to enjoy more vegetable based food, as long as I don’t think of it as vegetarian!

I suppose that shows how much we have adapted from our primitive ancestors who cannot have eaten a lot of grain – as some societies have adapted to process milk and butter and others have not. The really, to our eyes, primitive hunter gatherers who still exist and have very few western type degenerative diseases seem to consume enormous amounts of plant fibre from leaves and roots and relatively small amounts of meat.

The SBS documentary Medicine or Myth did trials of a simple finger tapping technique for stress and anxiety. They found it was effective for the majority of subjects. The lady who brought this treatment forward to be tested used it for her own chronic fatigue symptoms.
This an article about it: https://www.sbs.com.au/topics/life/health/article/2019/04/29/can-you-tap-your-stress-away
There is a film clip at the bottom of the article which you may or may not be able to view outside of Australia.

It did occur to me that for those that stress eat, it might be worth consideration.

On the very few occasions that I buy processed foods I try to read the labels. Ours are the same as the example given. The problem is that the printing is so small as to be useless without a magnifying glass – probably not a plot, just too much info to get on a small pack. Not that I understand all of the info. I know that an additive with an E number has the approval of the European Union, who are much more cautious than the US equivalent (don’t know about SH) but I still won’t know what the E number means. When I understand the word it may not convey much – I know what an emulsifier does, but which one? The degrees of processing are interesting. I had not thought of butter and olive oil as processed, so I do eat some processed items. For us it was generally reassuring, we very seldom eat anything in the highly processed groups, but worrying for our kids who do..

A University of Washington study which followed 32,000 men and 55,000 women for 25 years has concluded that eating two portions of live yoghurt each week reduces the incidence of bowel cancer by 20%. The good guys are Lactobacillus Bulgaris and streptococcus thermophilus.

The study was on yoghurt, but those active elements also occur in kefir, so I am assuming (hoping) it is equally effective.

What I’d like to know about this study is if they did before and after DEXA and RMR tests to show how much of the weigh loss was fat and how much was muscle and how this affected Resting Metabolic Rate.

I’ve read the book and looked at the study info I could access and no mention of this data.

Most people these days can’t afford to lose any muscle and from what I’ve seen in other references severe consistent calorie restriction for weeks and months can cause a lot of muscle loss.

such a great info. keep it up.
https://www.techasoft.com/

I read another paper last night – coffee was listed as one of the causes of gout. I think lettuce may be OK, but then I haven’t read all of the papers yet. I don’t intend to suffer from it myself, but I know enough people who do to have triggered my curiosity. I haven’t decided on next week’s topic. I had thought diabetes, but I did that last year. I need another thought from Cinque.

Huh? There are many purines and uric acid and caffeine are purines. Just because something contains purines doesn’t mean it will result in uric acid being dumped into the blood stream. This study https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa035700 concluded that “Higher levels of meat and seafood consumption are associated with an increased risk of gout, whereas a higher level of consumption of dairy products is associated with a decreased risk. Moderate intake of purine-rich vegetables or protein is not associated with an increased risk of gout.”

Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purine

So a more appropriate list might be something like don’t stuff yourself on meat or seafood.

Fructose is something different since when plenty of glucose is present and absent fiber and possibly other compounds it is quickly absorbed by the small intestine and must be processed by the liver. This does produce uric acid as well as have other undesirable impacts. The actual mechanics of fructose absorption isn’t well understood but experimentally it has been shown the fructose from HFCS does easily get absorbed and dumped in to the bloodstream.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fructose
(There are also many studies available on the absorption of fructose from various sources. See: https://scholar.google.co.jp/scholar?q=HFCS+and+fructose+absorption&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart)

Often fructose from fruit doesn’t get absorbed well or quickly and much of it can actually be digested by various bacteria in the gut. This can lead to a surplus of gas which can be an healthy if somewhat embarrassing indicator that the fructose isn’t passing on to the liver.

http://www.digestivedistress.com/fructose-and-its-impact

As for coffee, it seems only in extremely high amounts it can be a risk factor for gout. I suppose it is possible for metabolism of caffeine to result in uric acid, but my knowledge of organic chemistry is too limited to understand it at this point. Suffice to say studies in this area are conflicting and confusing. So probably one should avoid drinking coffee by the bucket. 😉

An article that is based on an Australian ABC docco on aging well. It discusses diet and exercise that may aid better health as we age.
It mentions and recommends 5:2. The tv docco also specified that what you eat on FDs should be almost entirely non-starchy veg.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2019-08-16/how-do-you-stay-younger-for-longer/11418630
This article contains a further link about intermittent fasting:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2018-09-26/intermittent-fasting-what-does-science-have-to-say/10287376

Cinque, thanks for that article.
It’s the first time I’ve heard that there are strains of E Coli that are helpful to us. I am so used to thinking of it as one of the harmful group of bacteria.