Early Retirement Extreme Forums

halfmoon wrote:

7Wannabe5 wrote:It neglects to mention the fact that the primary mechanism through which efficient storage of sugar calories as fat aided in the survival of the human species was storage of fat on the hips of human females leading to increased survival of infants.

@7Wb5, can you link or quote something about this? My utterly uneducated belief was always that pelvic width alone allowed for more successful childbirth, but I'm pretty sure pelvic width doesn't equal storage of hip fat any more than successful childbirth equals infant survival. I tried googling the subject without finding anything useful (see your warning about not all wisdom being online ).

Anecdotally, I weighed about 165-170 lbs right after giving birth. By the time each of my kids was 18 months I was 135-140. IMO my healthiest weight is about 145.

@Laura Ingalls: I know of several other women who had similar experiences. I felt constantly hungry while breast-feeding, so I actually gained a bit of weight during each of my two rounds of feeding an infant from around 8 lbs. to 30 lbs. on nothing but breast-milk and generic Cheerios. My kids were in the top percentile for both height and weight at 1 year, but now as young adults in their late 20s they are both very tall and quite slender, maybe 5'10" 135 lbs., and 6'3" 155 lbs.? Of course, this is likely mostly due to the fact that their father has about the same build as Keith Richards, so cancelled out my tendency towards curves.

1786 Satire

I didn't know where to put this, but the other ketogenic posts related to a book or journal.

Summary: Scientists created a pill to express certain genes (epigenetics) that are triggered by the ketogenic diet. The idea is that it is possible to separate the energy mechanisms for muscles and the brain. Allowing the body to burn both sugar and fat simultaneously creates a huge endurance gain.

http://www.cbc.ca/listen/shows/quirks-a ... t/12514947

Toska2, let me be the not-first pitchfork waving yokel to say that pill seems like a really bad idea.

That makes me want to reread Achilles' Choice. The book wasn't that good, but IIRC their premise and timing were spot on.

there is quite a lot of research being done in the ketogenic field right now. some humans now take "ketone salts", i.e. ketone bodies bound to some type of salt mineral that can be consumed. these are also called exogenous ketones, as opposed to the one generated inside the body.

brute has wondered if that's really a good idea, but it might depend a lot on the use case. for an athlete, who needs as much energy as possible, it might work. for epileptics, it's probably better to have the ketones in any form, so more epileptics can be seizure free with fewer restrictions. but brute has to wonder if there are side effects.

maybe by overdosing on ketones, that energy pathway will one day burn out, just like chronically elevated blood glucose burns out the glucose pathway?

@Brute, I was wondering the same thing after listening to Peter Attia talk about his experience with ketone salts. Seems like it could have unintended side effects. But, that's also the same guy who had a consultation for a stomach stapling surgery when he was 15 pounds overweight, so he's clearly willing to try anything and everything.

You talk about burning out pathways -- do you think that applies to anything biological? Do I have chronically high caffeine levels (or adenosine levels, if you prefer) because I drink a bunch of coffee every morning? I wonder if that pathway can burn out and cause the onset of adrenal fatigue.

@Smashter, yes. Chronic caffeine use does alter adenosine pathways, along with a few others.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3437321/
That's why you get headaches when you go a few days without.

brute isn't sure how the caffeine pathways work. it seems even long-time coffee drinkers only have short-term (=a few days) side effects before they start to normalize.

the ketone pathways are pretty unknown at this point - most medical professionals still think ketones are toxic, because the only context they've heard the name is keto-acedosis in T1D or late stage T2D.

the glucose pathway burning out is exactly what T2D leads to. fighting chronically elevated blood glucose, the pancreas has to keep banging out high levels of insulin, and over time loses the ability to do so. beta cells in the pancreas shut down. apparently this is irreversible if it goes on long enough, but brute has heard of a few cases where it's been reversed. might have been in rats.

to be honest, it's hard to say what "normal human bodies" do, because so many of the "best practices" and "standard of care" make problems worse, rather than better, and those then get used as the yard stick. any human with T2D can cure themselves completely, using no medicine or drugs or surgery at all, for free, within a week. yet T2D is one of the most costly diseases in the western world. (if humans are wondering how, the answer is simply water fasting for a week, or adopting a ketogenic/very low carb diet).

Ketones are the natural product of fatty acid breakdown. They are always present in your bloodstream and are a part of aerobic metabolism. Ketosis is just a relative increase in their level due to higher utilization of fat stores (either from endurance training or a very low-carb diet). Type I diabetics in ketoacidosis are essentially starving at the cellular level, despite abundant glucose. The danger of diabetic ketoacidosis is a combination of unavailable glucose and the lower blood pH (higher acidity because the ketones are acidic.)

Caffeine inhibits Adenosine receptors on the surface of neurons. Adenosine functions as a signaling molecule to coordinate fatigue/sleep, ensuring that sleep happens simultaneously in all parts of the brain. Caffeine inhibits the fatigue signal, so you can be alert even when your brain cells are running low on ATP and neurotransmitters (molecules that allow brain cells to communicate with eachother.) [Making new ATP and neurotransmitters takes longer than using them up, so you need a rest period to resynthesize. This is probably the major function of sleep in organisms with a nervous system.]
The body adapts to chronic exposure to caffeine by increasing the number of adenosine receptors, making you more susceptible to low levels of adenosine when caffeine isn't present. So, even after a full night's rest, you feel sluggish without your morning coffee.

even long term, after quitting coffee? no recovery?

I wonder how long I can count on my body to continue to process sugar very readily? I put on some weight over the winter, and it seemed to be lingering on my belly for a minute, so I gave myself a fast then eat a bunch of jellybeans glucose test on my 52nd birthday, and it was fine. Then I noted that in the course of just a few weeks, the fat moved from my belly to my butt. Since I have my very bottom heavy, cake-addict, 76 year old mother as a reference, I could easily surmise that this is the sign of a cycle that will cause joint failure well before T2D.

My quality of life goal is maximizing number of total lifetime hours I can devote to relaxed reading of collections of archaic essays on the topic of gardening while sipping on coffee or tea and eating a few ginger cookies. So, I will only eliminate the ginger cookies ONLY if their consumption would strictly preclude my ability to survive, read, garden or relax (certain amount of money in the bank and continued ability to attract sexual partners required for this level of relaxation, luckily butt fat due to sugar intake has not proven detrimental to income or mate acquisition.)

BRUTE wrote: ↑

Tue May 09, 2017 10:47 pm

even long term, after quitting coffee? no recovery?

No, you can absolutely recover. I go cold turkey on coffee once every few months to reset my tolerance. When I'm up to five cups a day and still feel like crap, I know its time to give it a rest.

7Wannabe5 wrote: ↑

Wed May 10, 2017 6:16 am

luckily butt fat due to sugar intake has not proven detrimental to income or mate acquisition.

Quite the opposite.

ThisDinosaur wrote: ↑

Wed May 10, 2017 8:10 am

7Wannabe5 wrote: ↑

Wed May 10, 2017 6:16 am

luckily butt fat due to sugar intake has not proven detrimental to income or mate acquisition.

Quite the opposite.

brute appreciates voluminous derrieres, and he is unable to facilitate deception on the topic. none of the fraternal units can prevent the truth from being established.

Damn right.

I played around a bit with the risk calculator on the American Diabetes Association website. I put in my current numbers/health history, and my current age, and then ran it again with some different numbers, and as if my numbers had stayed the same at age 62 or 72. The worst result I received was 3% risk of heart attack moving forward from 72 to 82. The advice offered made it clear that blood glucose, blood fat, and blood pressure results were Level 1 factors with diet, BMI or exercise habits being secondary. IOW, if the first three are good, then that is what is most critical, and you must either be lucky or doing something right.

IOW, I shall feel free to continue to include ginger cookies in MY diet

7Wannabe5 might consider getting her HbA1c (Or is it HgA1c?) tested. is shows an average of blood glucose over the last 3 months or so. best indicator as far as brute knows.

@BRUTE: I bought myself a blood glucose meter, home cholesterol kit and blood pressure cuff for my birthday. So, I would think it would be more revealing to just randomly test my levels under a variety of conditions periodically than to pay for HbA1C test. I just stuck myself, approximately 2 hours after eating egg salad on white, and some chocolate covered almonds, and I'm at 101. My blood pressure reading was 108/72. My total cholesterol is 131. I have less than 3% risk (lowest category given for my age) of developing diabetes over the next 8 years. I also have less than 1% chance of heart attack or stroke in next 10 years (also lowest categories for my age.) My 5 year risk for breast cancer is less than .9%, and my lifetime risk to age 90 is approximately 7.8% (average risk would be 10.8%.) I will probably die of pneumonia in my 90s.

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