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Guyenet, Taubes and why low carb works 78
The Weight of the Nation: More In(s)anity 32
Lose Weight by Achieving Optimal Ketosis 42
Fat Chance: Sugar-Busting Bestseller? 26
A New Toy Measuring Blood Ketones 120
What the Dangerous Low-Fat Diet Looked Like 61
Final Report: Two Months of Strict LCHF and Ketone Monitoring 79
The Swedish Diet Revolution and the Resulting Hysteria 65
Why Calorie Counting is an Eating Disorder 28
The Science of Low Carb 48
The Ketone Master Has Arrived 34
How to Burn 800 Calories in Just 30 Minutes 36
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Statins May Cause Diabetes

March 15 14:47 in Cholesterol, Diabetes, Drugs

Statins-diabetes

Cholesterol-lowering drugs, so called statins, may decrease the risk for heart disease somewhat. But they may also lead to side effects, such as: muscle pain, muscle fatigue, disorientation and a lower IQ, fatigue, impotence and so on.

One side effect that has long been known is that statins increase the risk of developing diabetes. You could, for example, have read about this on my Swedish blog three years ago and in my Swedish book The Food rEvolution, 2011. Now, a few years later, it’s been added as a “very important” update of the text in the Swedish catalogue of approved drugs, FASS: Diabetes is a possible side effect.

Hence another reason not to spread statins far and wide to heart-healthy individuals with “high cholesterol” – which is often defined as 200 mg/dl and above. Most of the healthy population has a total cholesterol number above 200 mg/dl, so this is one of the more obvious cases of disease mongering (the “selling of sickness”) you can imagine.

When it comes to heart disease (angina, previous heart attack) the benefit of statin treatment might be worth the risk. But if you treat your normal cholesterol number with statins you risk getting diabetes for no good reason. Does this sound like a good idea? Hardly, but it happens many times every day.

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Gwyneth Paltrow’s Kids Eat Low-Carb, Dietitians Predictably Panic

March 14 10:18 in Food for kids, Myths about LCHF

Gwyneth Paltrow

Gwyneth Paltrow says that her kids are on a low-carb diet – no bread, pasta or rice – as she thinks that is good for them. Predictably a few old-school dietitians immediately panicked.

The kids risk “nutrient deficiencies” warns one dietitian and another says that they “won’t be able to think straight as their brain won’t be functioning”. There is no end to the hysteria or the old myths that are dusted off. It’s even noted that Paltrow’s kids are thin (!) as if that must be bad. Apparently overweight kids are so common today that people are worried when they see a child without weight issues.

Fortunately more and more people are seeing through the nonsense. Nobody needs bread or pasta as long as they eat real food until satisfied (when on low carb this means more fat). And no, the brain does not quit working. It has never happened in reality, only in some book that dietitians are taught to memorize in school.

Here’s a great article about the Paltrow debate:

Guardian.co.uk: Why Gwyneth Paltrow’s no-carb diet for children makes perfect sense

Earlier about food for kids

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Lose Weight by Achieving Optimal Ketosis

March 13 15:09 in Insulin, Ketone Measuring, Weight Loss

Do you want to lose weight? Here’s number 14 of my 17 best tips. All of the published tips can be found on the How to Lose Weight page.

Before we get started, here’s a short recap of the tips so far: The first and most crucial piece of advice was to choose a low-carb diet. The next were eating when hungry, eating real food, measuring progress wisely, thinking long-term, avoiding fruit, alcohol and artificial sweeteners, review your medications, stressing less and sleeping more, eating less dairy and nut products, stocking up on vitamins and minerals and finally, exercise.

This is number fourteen:

14. Get into optimal ketosis

Warning: Not recommended for type 1 diabetics, see below.

confused

We’ve now arrived at tip number 14. If you’re still having trouble losing weight, despite following the 13 pieces of advice listed above, it might be a good idea to bring out the heavy artillery: optimal ketosis. Many people stalling at weight plateaus while on a low carb diet have found optimal ketosis helpful. It’s what can melt the fat off once again.

So how does this work? A quick run-through: The first tip was to eat low carb. This is because a low-carb diet lowers your levels of the fat-storing hormone insulin, allowing your fat deposits to shrink and release their stored energy. This tends to cause you to want to consume less calories than you expend – without hunger – and lose weight. Several of the tips mentioned above are about fine-tuning your diet to better this effect.

How do you know you’re getting the maximum hormonal impact from your low-carb diet? You do that by achieving what’s known as “optimal ketosis”.  Continue Reading →

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The New York Soda Battle Rages On

March 12 14:47 in Lobbyism, Sugar/fructose

Today giant cups of soda would have become illegal in New York. But at the last minute the ban was stopped by a judge. It’s not very far-fetched to believe that the soda industry had something to do with it. They have burned millions of dollars in advertising and lobbying against the proposal. They have also hired some of the highest-paid lawyers in the US to try to stop it.

Why the panic? The soda industry makes most of their profits from “heavy users”, people drinking enormous amounts of soda every day (ruining their health). People who are addicted are profitable. And the soda industry wants no obstacles to get more people addicted.

NYT: Judge Blocks New York City’s Limits on Big Sugary Drinks

Now this latest decision will be appealed and the battle goes on. We know how it will end. We’ve seen this movie before, with the tobacco industry in a lead role.

Once people smoked on the streets and in the restaurants of New York, but no more. Getting rid of insane soda cups is likely to do even more for people’s health. The question is just how long it will take.

What do you think?

PS: I know libertarians are allergic to any regulation. Fair enough. Unfortunately this time they are Big Sugar’s little helpers.

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Sugar, Diabetes and E-mails From Lustig

March 8 11:06 in Diabetes, Robert Lustig, Sugar/fructose

Do you remember the new study showing that more available sugar in countries is closely followed by more cases of diabetes?

As I wrote this kind of observational correlation does not really prove causation. But the story is slightly more complicated. Dr Lustig emailed me yesterday: Continue Reading →

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How Cows Could Green the World’s Deserts and Reverse Climate Change

March 5 21:47 in Climate Change

Could millions of cows help save the environment? Yes, says Allan Savory, a grassland ecosystem pioneer, in this fantastic new 20 minute TED-talk.

Animals grazing grass, when used right, do not turn grassland into desert. Savory used to belive that, a long time ago, but he’s now realized that was a tragic mistake (in a very personal way). The animals do the opposite. They make the desert green again.

Close to the end he claims that using this technique, turning deserts green again, could possibly bind enough carbon in the ground to make atmospheric carbon levels return to their pre-industrial state.

This would totally reverse climate change. It would feed millions of people. And it would turn grass-eating animals into environmental heroes.

If Savory’s right this is a total game-changer, and he seems to know what he’s talking about. Watch the talk, it’s amazing. What do you think?

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Swedish Truck Drivers Can Now Eat LCHF Almost Anywhere

March 1 17:42 in The Swedish Revolution
"This week's LCHF-special" Photo: Tonny V.

“This week’s LCHF-special” Photo: Tonny V.

Here’s road sign by a truck stop called “Rasta” or “Have a break” in Sweden . They serve Low Carb High Fat meals, a new one every week. On the sign we can also read that LCHF is an effective way to lose weight, without hunger!

Not bad, but it gets better:

Apparently they now serve LCHF-food at all Rasta restaurants, all over Sweden. You can find them here:

Rasta locations

How about that? I guess it would be hard to find similar offers in any other country. But in Sweden LCHF is getting ever more popular for losing weight and improving ones health.

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Still Believe ‘A Calorie Is a Calorie’?

February 28 20:18 in Calorie Counting, Robert Lustig

Still Believe ‘A Calorie Is a Calorie’? Dr Robert Lustig shares plenty of scientific reasons why that’s simply not correct:

Huffington Post: Still Believe ‘A Calorie Is a Calorie’?

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Surprise: More Sugar, More Diabetes

February 28 10:35 in Diabetes, Robert Lustig, Sugar/fructose

sugar

Can sugar cause diabetes? Has the increase in sugar consumption caused the worldwide epidemic of type 2 diabetes? Ask the sugar industry and the answer is a definite NO. Ask a random scientist in the field and the answer is likely to be “probably”, “possibly”, or “maybe”.

Ask dr Robert Lustig and the answer is emphatically yes. And I think he’s absolutely right.

A new study adds more support. Looking at the available sugar during the last decade in 175 countries the relationship is clear: The more sugar available, the more diabetes. Less sugar, less diabetes.

One extra can of soda per day corresponds to an extra 1.1 percent prevalence of diabetes. If correct this would mean a single extra can of soda per day would cause 3,500,000 more people to suffer from diabetes – just in the US. A relationship that rivals the disease-causing effects of smoking.

This relationship is clear even when correcting for other possible causes like obesity. In other words: Here’s more support for the theory that excess sugar does not just make you fat. Sugar can probably make you sick even before you get fat.

To be fair, this study is just about statistical correlations: it does not prove causality. But it’s another smoking gun for the sugar industry to try to explain away.

The evidence of harmful effects of extra sugar in our diets is piling up. And there’s no need to consume it, there’s nothing nutritionally necessary about pure sugar in excessive amounts. Let’s just get rid of our sugar addiction and stop this disaster.

More

More about diabetes

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More Milestones for Diet Doctor

February 27 12:54 in About Diet Doctor, The Food Revolution

24000

Fantastic. More and more people are being told about this site. The number of visitors are just exploding, blasting past 20,000 visits per day like nothing*.

As always, a big thanks to everybody telling their friends and family. Together we’ll help more and more people in need of the truth behind all the diet-and-health misinformation. We’ll help more and more people regain their health.

Another milestone

This site also reached 10,000 likes on Facebook yesterday. Welcome all!

*/ One reason for the recent dramatic increase could be the start of daily updates instead of a few times a week. I’ll try to keep it up as long as there are important and interesting things to write about (which should be forever).

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