Previously in this series, I’ve discussed the origins of the ketogenic diet and the biological role of ketone bodies (Part 1), whether living in a state of ketosis is normal and natural (Part 2), whether ketogenic diets are effective for weight loss
How does one find out what their gut composition is ? Pathology test ? Or are there home test kits ?
“where our gut microbiota ferment them” - is flatulence a sign of a healthy or unhealthy gut or “depends” ? I seem to recall that the Kalahari bushmen in the Gods Must be Crazy were avid “farters” but I dunno if that was done for exaggeration
Microba provides an excellent gut microbiome testing service which characterises both the composition of the gut microbiome and its functional capacity e.g. ability to make butyrate, folate and neurotransmitters.
Flatus is perfectly normal and, provides it doesn't smell like something crawled up there and died, a sign that your gut microbes are happily fermenting away, turning types of carbohydrate that you can't digest into a wealth of beneficial compounds. Nutritionist Rosemary Stanton and gastroenterologist Terry Bolin did the word a great service in writing their book 'Wind breaks: coming to terms with flatulence' which you can read on Archive/org: https://archive.org/details/windbreakscoming00boli/mode/2up.
I daresay the real Kalahari are true Champions of the Fart given their extremely high-fibre diet; no one minds flatulence if you live outdoors!
So satisfying to read a continuation of the questions from part 5 - many thanks. More fascinating microbiome studies on mice (though I suspect some mice were harmed or at least made depressed) from this great book (https://www.booktopia.com.au/gut-giulia-enders/book/9781771643764.html)
Poor mice! The number of mice that are bred, tortured and murdered in the name of medical research is mind-boggling... and so often, the findings of said research are in the "No sh*t, Sherlock" category, such as "if you eat junk food all day, you get fat, sick and miserable".
The 7 that died for the latest clotshot research are the most hard done by. Their sacrifice didn't slow the FDA down one bit. Further down the mice-hole are such shenanigans as the biased breeding and selection of, say, cancer resistant mice to use in cancer studies to doctor the outcomes. See Brett Weinstein on Joe Rogan or here: https://www.bitchute.com/video/0MhhI2t4KFBb/
Yes, you cherrypick what suits you. Meat is the only calorie and energy dense food that can provide what a human needs. Ketones are superior fuel. End of story. Keep dreaming and being irresponsible with your writing.
Please cite the scientific evidence for your claims. My Substack is all about evidence, not emotion, and all you're doing is arguing from your emotionally-motivated point of view.
BTW, no human population has ever lived in a sustained state of ketosis, as I demonstrated in Part 2 of this series, and Inuit people are genetically resistant to going into ketosis.
That is only half truth. We evolved from the primates due to huge intake of meat. Ask any anthropologist. It's only around 10.000 years ago that we started cultivating grains and veggies and with that we introduced bone and teeth diseases. This is ridiculous. Facts don't care about your feelings.
I am very familiar with the work of anthropologists who have demonstrated that it was the harnessing of fire to cook tubers which fuelled the rapid growth of the human brain. For example see Hardy et al 2015, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26591850/: "We provide evidence that cooked starch, a source of preformed glucose, greatly increased energy availability to human tissues with high glucose demands, such as the brain, red blood cells, and the developing fetus."
Here's a layperson's version of the article which spells it out clearly:
"“Up until now, there has been a heavy focus on the role of animal protein in the development of the human brain over the last two million years. The importance of carbohydrate, particularly in the form of starch-rich plant foods, has been largely overlooked. Our research suggests that dietary carbohydrates, along with meat, were essential for the evolution of modern big-brained humans.
The evidence suggests that Palaeolithic humans would not have evolved on today’s ‘Paleo’ diet.
According to the researchers, the high glucose demands required for the development of modern humans’ large brains would not have been met on a low carbohydrate diet. The human brain uses up to 25 per cent of the body’s energy budget and up to 60 per cent of blood glucose.
Human pregnancy and lactation, in particular, place additional demands on the body’s glucose budget, along with increased body size and the need for mobility and dietary flexibility.
Starches would have been readily available to early human populations in the form of tubers, seeds and some fruits and nuts. But it was only with the advent of cooking that such foods became more easily digested, leading to “transformational” changes in human evolution, said co-author Professor Les Copeland.
“Cooking starchy foods was central to the dietary change that triggered and sustained the growth of the human brain,” Professor Copeland said."
Even Neanderthals were eating large amounts of starches, e.g. see https://www.science.org/content/article/neanderthals-carb-loaded-helping-grow-their-big-brains: "The ancestors of both humans and Neanderthals were cooking lots of starchy foods at least 600,000 years ago. And they had already adapted to eating more starchy plants long before the invention of agriculture 10,000 years ago."
Science doesn't care about your feelings; it is all about evidence. The evidence is not on the side of humans having diverged from the common primate tree due to meat intake, because meat does not have sufficient glucose to fuel brain development. That's why obligate carnivores have relatively small brain sizes.
Definitely, my bet is that herbicides and pesticides cause lots of leaky gut, among other things. For plant food advocates, a carnivore diet seems very effective for some, as evidenced by Dr. Shawn Baker. Also, the globalists are pushing to reduce meat consumption, this is a big red flag. If meat is bad for us then it would continue to be heavily promoted. The tobacco plant (God provided tobacco plants, not cigarrettes) is a classic example, our bodies have receptors for natural molecules produced by tobacco plants, same for cannabis. Along with opium, these plants are our best medicines, therefore, almost all access to them is prohibited and prevented. Meat is now being demonised everywhere, so it must have positive value for us.
Shawn Baker may feel well on his diet, but the blood test results that he shares are really concerning (e.g. fasting BGL of 127). The things that he says about plant foods, for example that they contain toxins that damage the gut wall, are just plain wrong. The carnivore diet is really the ultimate in elitism, especially if you're choosing grass-fed beef, because there simply isn't enough grazing land for even a small fraction of the world's current population to eat this way, and if you want more grazing land, you're going to have to destroy natural habitats that support a wide diversity of species.
I'm deeply concerned at the globalist hijacking of the vegan and plant-based movements. Vegans are motivated by a concern for the rights of all animal species to live their lives as they choose, and as they were evolved to do, rather than as the slaves of humans. This ideology has been twisted into a hatred of humanity by the globalist psychos, as well as being hijacked by their junk food manufacturer buddies so that what was a health-promoting diet of simple plant foods is now, especially for new vegans, an endless parade of vegan versions of the crap they used to eat before they went vegan. The plant-based movement has similarly been subverted by the climate change apocalypse narrative.
I think you're drawing way too long a bow in your assumption that the globalist assault on meat constitutes proof that meat must be good for us. The simple fact is that they're attempting to take control over every element of the food supply, including, and especially, seeds, as Vandana Shiva has been talking about for years. They want everyone (except them, of course) eating ultraprocessed foodless foods, rather than nutritious foods grown locally from traditional open-pollinated seeds, backyard chooks and the like.
The fact that our bodies contain receptors for compounds found in certain plants similarly doesn't constitute proof that those plants are inherently health-promoting for us. Many bacteria produce neurotransmitters that are also used in more complex life forms. Once a compound develops, it - or versions of it - tend to crop up in multiple life-forms.
It was more so the miraculous health improvements seen in people other than Shawn Baker that grabbed my attention (testimonies on his website). Perhaps Dr. Baker has taken the carnivore diet to extremes and hence the less than ideal blood results, but maybe some animal products for some people are beneficial, especially if the animal products are clean and not processed. Is it that bone broths and animal fats can heal leaky gut? I totally agree that the globalists twist and distort beneficial practices to suit their own agenda. However, I never said meat must be good for us because they demonise it, just that it’s a red flag and that meat may have health benefits for some people.
In regards to receptors in the human body for certain plant molecules, this would indicate the body can use those molecules in certain situations. I agree it doesn’t mean long-term or regular use would be health-promoting, but medicines are useful in certain situations. For example, nicotine can be used to stimulate breathing when a person finds it difficult to do so. Nicotine is also known to activate the parasympathetic nervous system. Should we smoke tobacco, not at all, should tobacco compounds be studied for use as medicines, absolutely. Is organic tobacco health promoting if eaten on a regular basis, as is the case with cannabis?
Testimonials are a dime a dozen. You can see testimonials for amazing reversals of serious illnesses on the website of any 'diet doctor'; for example, Dr Brooke Goldner has amassed quite a collection of autoimmune disease reversal testimonials for her green smoothie-based protocol, which is the polar opposite of Shawn Baker's. What can we learn from testimonials? Pretty much nothing. The scientific method begins with observation of a phenomenon, and testimonials fit this bill. But it's only the first step; you then need to form a hypothesis, design an experiment to test it, conduct the experiment with integrity, and analyse the results.
Bone broths and animal fats have nothing whatsoever to do with reducing abnormal gut permeability; butyrate is the major factor controlling this, and it's the byproduct of bacterial fermentation of microbiota-accessible carbohydrate, as mentioned in this article. If anything, animal fats that are high in saturated fat worsen so-called 'leaky gut' as they facilitate translocation of bacterial endotoxin, and encourage the growth of bile-eating bacteria that produce hydrogen sulphide gas, which irritates the lining of the gut.
Can certain plants act as medicines? Absolutely! Animals have been observed to seek out particular plants when they're unwell, but not touch them at any other time. And of course there are long-established traditions of herbal medicine in pretty much every culture that's been studied.
‘Testimonials are a dime a dozen’, ditto for inaccurate, falsified and misleading scientific research, studies and peer-reviewed papers. In fact, barely any scientific research is structured well enough to account for placebo at all stages (including the researcher’s behaviours). An example of the healing powers of animal food products is the GAPS diet, which is a miracle cure for some. Consider that meat has been a staple food for at least 2000 years and is currently a massive industry that feeds billions of people. If forced to make a switch to a 100% plant-based diet, some or many of those people would experience poor health and early death, because this is how their minds are programmed, the placebo effect. For now, one answer is to convert from conventional to regenerative agriculture that promotes animal welfare and mimics nature. I’m sure Vandana Shiva would agree that it’s factory farming that needs to be stopped, both of animal and plant foods.
I'm well aware of the weaknesses of scientific research, which is why I look for consilience: is a claim backed up by multiple line of evidence across multiple disciplines? This is why I laid out the series on ketogenic diets in the way that I did, examining the biochemistry of the state of ketosis, the conclusive evidence that no animal species has ever lived in a permanent or even prolonged state of ketosis, and then parsing a wide range of scientific studies, from ecological to epidemiological to intervention to metabolic ward studies.
The GAPS diet, like the ketogenic and carnivore diets, is big on testimonials but there is no actual research backing its claims.
One thing you need to seriously think about is the mismatch between a diet that enhances gene survival and a diet that promotes longevity. There is a strong inverse correlation between animal product intake and average age of puberty. If a person becomes sexually mature at a younger age, they will be able to have more offspring and hence will be more genetically successful. But gene survival is to some extent at odds with individual survival; farmers are well familiar with the truism "early to ripen, early to rot". The high IGF-1 and mTOR levels found in people with a higher intake of animal protein cause faster aging and earlier death. It's not a coincidence that all of the 5 Blue Zones (areas with the highest rates of centenarians) eat diets that are relatively low in both total and animal protein. Valter Longo's research on centenarians has confirmed this, although interestingly he found that people who had eaten a lower protein diet in their youth and midlife, and then switched to a higher protein diet in their old age, had the greatest longevity - probably because protein digestion declines with age and this can lead to frailty if protein intake is not increased.
As to whether the placebo effect would cause mass sickness and death if people were forced en masse to switch to a pant-based diet, I doubt it, I think the real issue would be that they would be eating a non-nutritious diet comprised of ultraprocessed food components rather than wholesome plant foods such as those eaten by Blue Zones inhabitants: fruits, vegetables, legumes and whole grains, grown locally and prepared in the home.
This shows misunderstanding of a microbiome. There is a big difference between lacking a certain bacteria and not needing it, due to a specific diet. If you lack Bifidobacteria and consume milk products, you are in trouble. If there is no sugars to consume, you are ok. Most research on keto and carnivore diet, that is used as a reference, doesn't really target those diets, but just some of their elements.
I'm not sure what you mean when you write "If you lack Bifidobacteria and consume milk products, you are in trouble. If there is no sugars to consume, you are ok" because, as mentioned in the article, the key substrate for Bifidobacteria is not milk products but microbiota accessible carbohydrates found in whole grains and legumes. Bifidobactera are key species in guilds that collaborate to produce short chain fatty acids such as butyrate. Can you point to any studies on the long-term (i.e. years to decades) impact of ketogenic or carnivore diets on gut microbiota, and correlations with chronic disease?
It was just an example. Some people that are recently on the diet freak out because they lack certain bacteria in their gut. Microbiome on carnivore diet cannot be compared to diets on veggies. There is a reset and it makes sense, since there isn't any food for certain bacteria. Especially if you have some autoimmune issues and go full meat/water/salt. I don't know any studies on long term effects, only people's experience. You can contact people that are on this diet for decades, directly and get their lab results and perhaps start your own study. There are some institutions that help people with different issues. I know there is one in Budapest. They might have more info. I have seen many interviews with the lady that runs it. Her name is Dr. Zsófia Clemens
I'm amazed that people will adopt diets that are totally out of concordance with human evolution, anatomy, physiology and biochemistry, on the basis of testimonials they see on the internet. I'm afraid Steve Patterson is correct: we've already entered a new Dark Age.
The logic actually is that it is very much in concordance with human evolution and results pretty much speak for themselves. I don't think I have seen more amazing testimonies in any other community than what I have seen in Ketogains and Lion Diet on FB, for example. Nothing comes close. It looks like an evolution of a person from what seems to be the norm these days, fat bodies, multiple autoimmune issues, horrible skin etc, to athletic people that aren't really professional athletes. My personal story is similar. It took me just a week to heal dermatitis and early onset arthritis with keto/carnivore diet. So, you see where I'm coming from?
No, it's not in concordance with human evolution. Humans are primates. We evolved as predominantly plant eaters - hence our dentition and the anatomy and physiology of our digestive tracts - and then adapted to inclusion of meat in our diets. If you take one look into the mouth of a carnivore, you'll see what an animal that has evolved to eat meat actually looks like. Testimonials mean absolutely nothing; take a look at websites promoting plant-based, all-raw, ketogenic, blood type or shoe size diets, and you'll see before and after photos of people who are all happy as Larry on their new diet. And in every forum that springs up to provide support for these people, you'll find those for whom it's not working. I'm glad that your health problems have resolved on your preferred diet, and I could point to thousands of online testimonials, and show you hundreds of my own case files, of people who resolved the issues you were struggling with, on a completely different diet. I give dietary advice that is based on consilience, not the latest dietary fad that does the rounds of the internet.
Perhaps the last sentence could read, ‘Eat more plants that are free from glyphosate, atrazine and paraquat.’
Yes, there's definitely evidence that glyphosate in particular has a very deleterious impact on the gut microbiota.
How does one find out what their gut composition is ? Pathology test ? Or are there home test kits ?
“where our gut microbiota ferment them” - is flatulence a sign of a healthy or unhealthy gut or “depends” ? I seem to recall that the Kalahari bushmen in the Gods Must be Crazy were avid “farters” but I dunno if that was done for exaggeration
Microba provides an excellent gut microbiome testing service which characterises both the composition of the gut microbiome and its functional capacity e.g. ability to make butyrate, folate and neurotransmitters.
Flatus is perfectly normal and, provides it doesn't smell like something crawled up there and died, a sign that your gut microbes are happily fermenting away, turning types of carbohydrate that you can't digest into a wealth of beneficial compounds. Nutritionist Rosemary Stanton and gastroenterologist Terry Bolin did the word a great service in writing their book 'Wind breaks: coming to terms with flatulence' which you can read on Archive/org: https://archive.org/details/windbreakscoming00boli/mode/2up.
I daresay the real Kalahari are true Champions of the Fart given their extremely high-fibre diet; no one minds flatulence if you live outdoors!
Interesting read, thank you.
Thanks for reading; please share if you found it helpful!
So satisfying to read a continuation of the questions from part 5 - many thanks. More fascinating microbiome studies on mice (though I suspect some mice were harmed or at least made depressed) from this great book (https://www.booktopia.com.au/gut-giulia-enders/book/9781771643764.html)
Poor mice! The number of mice that are bred, tortured and murdered in the name of medical research is mind-boggling... and so often, the findings of said research are in the "No sh*t, Sherlock" category, such as "if you eat junk food all day, you get fat, sick and miserable".
The 7 that died for the latest clotshot research are the most hard done by. Their sacrifice didn't slow the FDA down one bit. Further down the mice-hole are such shenanigans as the biased breeding and selection of, say, cancer resistant mice to use in cancer studies to doctor the outcomes. See Brett Weinstein on Joe Rogan or here: https://www.bitchute.com/video/0MhhI2t4KFBb/
Yes, you cherrypick what suits you. Meat is the only calorie and energy dense food that can provide what a human needs. Ketones are superior fuel. End of story. Keep dreaming and being irresponsible with your writing.
Please cite the scientific evidence for your claims. My Substack is all about evidence, not emotion, and all you're doing is arguing from your emotionally-motivated point of view.
BTW, no human population has ever lived in a sustained state of ketosis, as I demonstrated in Part 2 of this series, and Inuit people are genetically resistant to going into ketosis.
That is only half truth. We evolved from the primates due to huge intake of meat. Ask any anthropologist. It's only around 10.000 years ago that we started cultivating grains and veggies and with that we introduced bone and teeth diseases. This is ridiculous. Facts don't care about your feelings.
I am very familiar with the work of anthropologists who have demonstrated that it was the harnessing of fire to cook tubers which fuelled the rapid growth of the human brain. For example see Hardy et al 2015, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26591850/: "We provide evidence that cooked starch, a source of preformed glucose, greatly increased energy availability to human tissues with high glucose demands, such as the brain, red blood cells, and the developing fetus."
Here's a layperson's version of the article which spells it out clearly:
"“Up until now, there has been a heavy focus on the role of animal protein in the development of the human brain over the last two million years. The importance of carbohydrate, particularly in the form of starch-rich plant foods, has been largely overlooked. Our research suggests that dietary carbohydrates, along with meat, were essential for the evolution of modern big-brained humans.
The evidence suggests that Palaeolithic humans would not have evolved on today’s ‘Paleo’ diet.
According to the researchers, the high glucose demands required for the development of modern humans’ large brains would not have been met on a low carbohydrate diet. The human brain uses up to 25 per cent of the body’s energy budget and up to 60 per cent of blood glucose.
Human pregnancy and lactation, in particular, place additional demands on the body’s glucose budget, along with increased body size and the need for mobility and dietary flexibility.
Starches would have been readily available to early human populations in the form of tubers, seeds and some fruits and nuts. But it was only with the advent of cooking that such foods became more easily digested, leading to “transformational” changes in human evolution, said co-author Professor Les Copeland.
“Cooking starchy foods was central to the dietary change that triggered and sustained the growth of the human brain,” Professor Copeland said."
Even Neanderthals were eating large amounts of starches, e.g. see https://www.science.org/content/article/neanderthals-carb-loaded-helping-grow-their-big-brains: "The ancestors of both humans and Neanderthals were cooking lots of starchy foods at least 600,000 years ago. And they had already adapted to eating more starchy plants long before the invention of agriculture 10,000 years ago."
Science doesn't care about your feelings; it is all about evidence. The evidence is not on the side of humans having diverged from the common primate tree due to meat intake, because meat does not have sufficient glucose to fuel brain development. That's why obligate carnivores have relatively small brain sizes.
Definitely, my bet is that herbicides and pesticides cause lots of leaky gut, among other things. For plant food advocates, a carnivore diet seems very effective for some, as evidenced by Dr. Shawn Baker. Also, the globalists are pushing to reduce meat consumption, this is a big red flag. If meat is bad for us then it would continue to be heavily promoted. The tobacco plant (God provided tobacco plants, not cigarrettes) is a classic example, our bodies have receptors for natural molecules produced by tobacco plants, same for cannabis. Along with opium, these plants are our best medicines, therefore, almost all access to them is prohibited and prevented. Meat is now being demonised everywhere, so it must have positive value for us.
Shawn Baker may feel well on his diet, but the blood test results that he shares are really concerning (e.g. fasting BGL of 127). The things that he says about plant foods, for example that they contain toxins that damage the gut wall, are just plain wrong. The carnivore diet is really the ultimate in elitism, especially if you're choosing grass-fed beef, because there simply isn't enough grazing land for even a small fraction of the world's current population to eat this way, and if you want more grazing land, you're going to have to destroy natural habitats that support a wide diversity of species.
I'm deeply concerned at the globalist hijacking of the vegan and plant-based movements. Vegans are motivated by a concern for the rights of all animal species to live their lives as they choose, and as they were evolved to do, rather than as the slaves of humans. This ideology has been twisted into a hatred of humanity by the globalist psychos, as well as being hijacked by their junk food manufacturer buddies so that what was a health-promoting diet of simple plant foods is now, especially for new vegans, an endless parade of vegan versions of the crap they used to eat before they went vegan. The plant-based movement has similarly been subverted by the climate change apocalypse narrative.
I think you're drawing way too long a bow in your assumption that the globalist assault on meat constitutes proof that meat must be good for us. The simple fact is that they're attempting to take control over every element of the food supply, including, and especially, seeds, as Vandana Shiva has been talking about for years. They want everyone (except them, of course) eating ultraprocessed foodless foods, rather than nutritious foods grown locally from traditional open-pollinated seeds, backyard chooks and the like.
The fact that our bodies contain receptors for compounds found in certain plants similarly doesn't constitute proof that those plants are inherently health-promoting for us. Many bacteria produce neurotransmitters that are also used in more complex life forms. Once a compound develops, it - or versions of it - tend to crop up in multiple life-forms.
It was more so the miraculous health improvements seen in people other than Shawn Baker that grabbed my attention (testimonies on his website). Perhaps Dr. Baker has taken the carnivore diet to extremes and hence the less than ideal blood results, but maybe some animal products for some people are beneficial, especially if the animal products are clean and not processed. Is it that bone broths and animal fats can heal leaky gut? I totally agree that the globalists twist and distort beneficial practices to suit their own agenda. However, I never said meat must be good for us because they demonise it, just that it’s a red flag and that meat may have health benefits for some people.
In regards to receptors in the human body for certain plant molecules, this would indicate the body can use those molecules in certain situations. I agree it doesn’t mean long-term or regular use would be health-promoting, but medicines are useful in certain situations. For example, nicotine can be used to stimulate breathing when a person finds it difficult to do so. Nicotine is also known to activate the parasympathetic nervous system. Should we smoke tobacco, not at all, should tobacco compounds be studied for use as medicines, absolutely. Is organic tobacco health promoting if eaten on a regular basis, as is the case with cannabis?
Testimonials are a dime a dozen. You can see testimonials for amazing reversals of serious illnesses on the website of any 'diet doctor'; for example, Dr Brooke Goldner has amassed quite a collection of autoimmune disease reversal testimonials for her green smoothie-based protocol, which is the polar opposite of Shawn Baker's. What can we learn from testimonials? Pretty much nothing. The scientific method begins with observation of a phenomenon, and testimonials fit this bill. But it's only the first step; you then need to form a hypothesis, design an experiment to test it, conduct the experiment with integrity, and analyse the results.
Bone broths and animal fats have nothing whatsoever to do with reducing abnormal gut permeability; butyrate is the major factor controlling this, and it's the byproduct of bacterial fermentation of microbiota-accessible carbohydrate, as mentioned in this article. If anything, animal fats that are high in saturated fat worsen so-called 'leaky gut' as they facilitate translocation of bacterial endotoxin, and encourage the growth of bile-eating bacteria that produce hydrogen sulphide gas, which irritates the lining of the gut.
Can certain plants act as medicines? Absolutely! Animals have been observed to seek out particular plants when they're unwell, but not touch them at any other time. And of course there are long-established traditions of herbal medicine in pretty much every culture that's been studied.
‘Testimonials are a dime a dozen’, ditto for inaccurate, falsified and misleading scientific research, studies and peer-reviewed papers. In fact, barely any scientific research is structured well enough to account for placebo at all stages (including the researcher’s behaviours). An example of the healing powers of animal food products is the GAPS diet, which is a miracle cure for some. Consider that meat has been a staple food for at least 2000 years and is currently a massive industry that feeds billions of people. If forced to make a switch to a 100% plant-based diet, some or many of those people would experience poor health and early death, because this is how their minds are programmed, the placebo effect. For now, one answer is to convert from conventional to regenerative agriculture that promotes animal welfare and mimics nature. I’m sure Vandana Shiva would agree that it’s factory farming that needs to be stopped, both of animal and plant foods.
I'm well aware of the weaknesses of scientific research, which is why I look for consilience: is a claim backed up by multiple line of evidence across multiple disciplines? This is why I laid out the series on ketogenic diets in the way that I did, examining the biochemistry of the state of ketosis, the conclusive evidence that no animal species has ever lived in a permanent or even prolonged state of ketosis, and then parsing a wide range of scientific studies, from ecological to epidemiological to intervention to metabolic ward studies.
The GAPS diet, like the ketogenic and carnivore diets, is big on testimonials but there is no actual research backing its claims.
One thing you need to seriously think about is the mismatch between a diet that enhances gene survival and a diet that promotes longevity. There is a strong inverse correlation between animal product intake and average age of puberty. If a person becomes sexually mature at a younger age, they will be able to have more offspring and hence will be more genetically successful. But gene survival is to some extent at odds with individual survival; farmers are well familiar with the truism "early to ripen, early to rot". The high IGF-1 and mTOR levels found in people with a higher intake of animal protein cause faster aging and earlier death. It's not a coincidence that all of the 5 Blue Zones (areas with the highest rates of centenarians) eat diets that are relatively low in both total and animal protein. Valter Longo's research on centenarians has confirmed this, although interestingly he found that people who had eaten a lower protein diet in their youth and midlife, and then switched to a higher protein diet in their old age, had the greatest longevity - probably because protein digestion declines with age and this can lead to frailty if protein intake is not increased.
As to whether the placebo effect would cause mass sickness and death if people were forced en masse to switch to a pant-based diet, I doubt it, I think the real issue would be that they would be eating a non-nutritious diet comprised of ultraprocessed food components rather than wholesome plant foods such as those eaten by Blue Zones inhabitants: fruits, vegetables, legumes and whole grains, grown locally and prepared in the home.
This shows misunderstanding of a microbiome. There is a big difference between lacking a certain bacteria and not needing it, due to a specific diet. If you lack Bifidobacteria and consume milk products, you are in trouble. If there is no sugars to consume, you are ok. Most research on keto and carnivore diet, that is used as a reference, doesn't really target those diets, but just some of their elements.
I'm not sure what you mean when you write "If you lack Bifidobacteria and consume milk products, you are in trouble. If there is no sugars to consume, you are ok" because, as mentioned in the article, the key substrate for Bifidobacteria is not milk products but microbiota accessible carbohydrates found in whole grains and legumes. Bifidobactera are key species in guilds that collaborate to produce short chain fatty acids such as butyrate. Can you point to any studies on the long-term (i.e. years to decades) impact of ketogenic or carnivore diets on gut microbiota, and correlations with chronic disease?
It was just an example. Some people that are recently on the diet freak out because they lack certain bacteria in their gut. Microbiome on carnivore diet cannot be compared to diets on veggies. There is a reset and it makes sense, since there isn't any food for certain bacteria. Especially if you have some autoimmune issues and go full meat/water/salt. I don't know any studies on long term effects, only people's experience. You can contact people that are on this diet for decades, directly and get their lab results and perhaps start your own study. There are some institutions that help people with different issues. I know there is one in Budapest. They might have more info. I have seen many interviews with the lady that runs it. Her name is Dr. Zsófia Clemens
I'm amazed that people will adopt diets that are totally out of concordance with human evolution, anatomy, physiology and biochemistry, on the basis of testimonials they see on the internet. I'm afraid Steve Patterson is correct: we've already entered a new Dark Age.
The logic actually is that it is very much in concordance with human evolution and results pretty much speak for themselves. I don't think I have seen more amazing testimonies in any other community than what I have seen in Ketogains and Lion Diet on FB, for example. Nothing comes close. It looks like an evolution of a person from what seems to be the norm these days, fat bodies, multiple autoimmune issues, horrible skin etc, to athletic people that aren't really professional athletes. My personal story is similar. It took me just a week to heal dermatitis and early onset arthritis with keto/carnivore diet. So, you see where I'm coming from?
No, it's not in concordance with human evolution. Humans are primates. We evolved as predominantly plant eaters - hence our dentition and the anatomy and physiology of our digestive tracts - and then adapted to inclusion of meat in our diets. If you take one look into the mouth of a carnivore, you'll see what an animal that has evolved to eat meat actually looks like. Testimonials mean absolutely nothing; take a look at websites promoting plant-based, all-raw, ketogenic, blood type or shoe size diets, and you'll see before and after photos of people who are all happy as Larry on their new diet. And in every forum that springs up to provide support for these people, you'll find those for whom it's not working. I'm glad that your health problems have resolved on your preferred diet, and I could point to thousands of online testimonials, and show you hundreds of my own case files, of people who resolved the issues you were struggling with, on a completely different diet. I give dietary advice that is based on consilience, not the latest dietary fad that does the rounds of the internet.