Diabetes II And How To Restore And Protect Nerves, KMUD, 2014

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burtlancast

burtlancast

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Raymond Peat, Ph.D.
Diabetes II and How to Restore and Protect Nerves
The Herb Doctors, KMUD, 2014​


(Transcribed by Sol and Sweetly, verified by Burtlancast)

HD: Once again, could you outline your academic and professional backgrounds ?

RP: Relative to nerve biology, that was my intended major when I went to the University of Oregon as a graduate student in 1968, because I had been interested in linguistics and psychology. But, soon as I got there, 2 or 3 months, I've decided to switch to aging and reproductive physiology, because of the great dogmatism in the nerve biology field. So, I spent the 3-4 years working on reproductive aging (female reproductive aging in particular). So, i concentrated on the effects of estrogen, progesterone, thyroid, oxygen, and antioxidants, on the age-related changes in metabolism.

HD: And i know that during the past 35 years, you've been doing your own research and have been in private consulting.

RP: 40 years.

HD: A lot of people have corroborated your advices, and your material has been fairly controversial, at least to me, since the time i've been introduced to you, in 2007. In my education, herbal medicine, the same dogmatic and erroneous ideas in science were still perpetrated, and a lot of what you've been uncovering for these last 6 years certainly got me thinking differently. It's very difficult to unlearn. Like the constant suggestion that sugar and salt are bad for you.
Concerning diabetes, your latest newsletter was relating to how to protect, nourish and restore nerves. The classical description of diabetes is a wasting disease, where the excess glucose is lost in the urine as a byproduct of protein metabolism, and the patient simply wastes away, deprived of the needed energy production to sustain cellular function, resulting in death. And obesity is now a universal disease, that diabetics are commonly presenting. So, rather than the classic description of diabetes, medicine now erroneously classes diabetes as insulin resistance, as well as insulin dependence, which is quite rare. Would you explain the processes that you understand diabetes to stem from, and outline your approach to it's management?

RP: My father happened to be an example of the traditional, original type of diabetes: he wasted away to i think, it was under 100 pounds. It was just a few years after insulin had come into medical use, and he didn't want to become dependent on it. So he and my mother looked through the old naturopathic medical literature, and found that Brewer's yeast had sometimes cured people. So he went on an brewer's yeast diet for several weeks, and recovered his weight, and lived the rest of his life with no signs of diabetes.

HD: Do you know how much Brewer's yeast he was using ?

RP: That was his only food, basically, for several weeks.

HD: Wow. Just refresh my memory: I know the B vitamins are the important part of brewer's yeast, but specifically?

RP: And there are steroids in it, and lots of potassium, among phosphate (which is not for general health: you can very easily get phosphate poisoning). But it's probably one of the factors that could be involved in that effect, maybe by having something to do with interfering with stress hormones.

HD: So your father recovered from 100 pounds, wasting away, using brewer’s yeast as a fairly sole dietary constituent?

RP: Yea. And the cause …I think, there are probably many causes of the traditional wasting form of diabetes. But a virus is one of the plausible theories that can cause inflammation and killing off temporarily of the insulin producing cells. But, just very intense stress… there were experiments in which, if part of the dog's pancreas was removed, so it had just a smaller reserve of insulin producing cells, then a single injection of a large dose of cortisol was enough to make the dog permanently diabetic.

HD: So that extreme stress caused by cortisol itself is an inflammatory mediator ?

RP: Yea. And then, once the tissues are unable to get glucose just from that one episode of stress-induced lack of insulin, the cells are basically dying because they can't get the glucose they need, so they call on fatty acids from stores; and the fatty acid in turn kills the remaining or regenerating insulin producing cells. So, it starts a vicious circle.

HD: Just in case people who are listening don't understand what a fatty acid is and a free fatty acid, would you just explain what they are and how they're used?

RP: A fat such as butter, or lard or corn oil, most of them consist of about 18 carbon atoms in a chain with oxygens on one end (making it acidic) and the rest of it, either just plain carbon and hydrogen, or occasionally, with the hydrogens removed (that’s called an unsaturated fatty acid, with a carbon chain interrupted by pure hydrogens). And those chains are attached to a glycerine molecule (3 carbons), technically an alcohol, that forms an ester with these free fatty acids, blocking the acid group, which makes the free fatty acid water soluble to some extent. And when the glycerine, which is also very water soluble, is combined with free fatty acids, it becomes very water insoluble. And that is the form in which it’s stored in the fat cells. Because you just form a drop of pure fat in the cell, and it’s very reluctant to diffuse away because of its insolubility. So, when you need energy, you have to activate enzymes that break the free fatty acids loose; when that happens from stress, or hunger, or fasting, these free fatty acids get into the bloodstream and enter cells and are available as energy production in the absence of glucose. The trouble is that, that process also tends to keep the stress going if the free fatty acids are unsaturated; those are more water soluble. And when they're polyunsaturated, like from corn oil, safflower and so on, those have further stress inducing action that tends to keep the breakdown of fat going and the stress reproducing itself.

HD: Normally if someone was on... because I know you’re a great advocate of saturated fats, butter, and coconut oil in particular. And very much against the negative health impacts of the liquid oils, and fish oil in particular. If somebody is consuming a lot of butter, milk, whether is full fat or semi-fat and coconut oil, the fats therein, when they are stored as fat, they don’t have the same destructive, oxidative effects when they are liberated?

RP: Yeah, if you store a very saturated fat, like the Indians make ghee, by removing the water-soluble material, a pure fat oil, or coconut oil which is 98% saturated, those things keep for years without breaking down. But if you leave a bottle of safflower, or corn oil, or linseed oil open, within hours or days you can detect spontaneous oxidation of it in the air. And that happens at body temperature, with the high oxygen content of your blood; it happens very quickly with the polyunsaturated fats. Interestingly, the biological oxidation is pretty much the opposite because if you have two types of fat circulating in your blood stream, one saturated fatty acid and one polyunsaturated, your muscles will be able to oxidize the saturated fat preferentially, the polyunsaturated fat tends to go into storage, if you eat more than you can oxidize. So it tends to be fattening if you eat a little extra of the polyunsaturated, because it stores more easily. But your fat cells can also oxidize saturated fat, and so they live on the saturated fat they have stored,. So, over the years stress is more likely to release the polyunsaturated fats making stress an increasing problem with age.

HD: So that’s the thing behind what you’re describing now as the component free fatty acids (FFAs); if somebody’s eating a lot of saturated fat like butter, ghee, coconut oil then they’re not going to liberate the same free fatty acids that they would if they were consuming polyunsaturated ones in their diet?

RP: Right

HD: Getting back to the classic description of diabetes as being a wasting disease, which actually we see very little of, as opposed to what now is generically diabetes, and it’s very largely linked to obesity in the general population, that obesity is probably directly linked to the polyunsaturated thyroid-suppressive diet some people consume?

RP: It’s now increasingly seen as a fat inflammation condition, a mild chronic inflammation. And a major thing that causes that is the continual spontaneous release of small amounts of arachidonic acid, which is a highly unsaturated fatty acid. Even if you don’t eat it, linoleic acid for example will be turned into it by enzymes in the body. So, it becomes one of the most toxic stored fats, both in phospholipids and in the triglyceride storage. And when that’s released, that allows it to be turned into various things, but especially prostaglandins which are probably our biggest inflammatory problem.

HD: These things are associated with inflammation, aren’t they? When you damage your tissues, prostaglandins is the thing that most people might recognize as being liberated, causing swelling and edema.

RP: That’s why aspirin is so great.

HD: Dr Peat, getting back again to diabetes. How do you approach it? Rather than the orthodoxy (metformin or insulin)? And, also avoiding even glucose ? It’s contrary, perhaps?

RP: If you focus on stopping the liberation of fatty acids from your tissues and inhibit their conversion to prostaglandins, you can usually very quickly lower your blood sugar quite a bit and feel better. The two chemicals that are most practical for lowering FFAs and stopping the stress reaction are niacinamide, which has many effects. But the first one is commonly associated with this inhibiting of the lipase (the enzyme that liberates FFAs from your triglycerides stores). And aspirin also does that (and several other things relating to liberation of FFAs and their conversion to the inflammatory mediators).

HD: So both niacinamide and aspirin do that job of decreasing the liberation of FFAs. Do you know the mechanism by which that is working?

RP: In the case of aspirin, it’s both indirect and direct actions on at least three different lipase enzymes (both phospholipases, and the adipose hormone-sensitive lipase that insulin controls). So, an insulin deficiency in itself liberates more of the FFAs. And so, both of these are acting directly on the enzyme which is caused to be overactive by insulin deficiency.

HD: Just for example, most people are pretty frightened I think of using aspirin. Whenever I mention aspirin to people, the first thing they are always very shocked that I mentioned aspirin; it’s almost a complete taboo. Obviously when people start listening and reading the facts about it, they get a different opinion. And as time goes on they begin to realize that perhaps there’s actually something very good in it. I’ve read some recent articles about it’s antiviral activity. And they are actually looking in it pretty intensely for other conditions surrounding potential virus problems. But its main anti-inflammatory effect is pretty useful widespread. What would you suggest as a dose for aspirin? Because the other thing people worry about is how much bleeding they may get if they are using too much. You recommend using vitamin K as 1mg per 325 mg tablet.

RP: Yeah. Especially if a person has combined antibiotics with aspirin they might have lost the intestinal bacteria that make vitamin K. And, eating lots of cooked greens such as kale, and liver and some types of cheeses are the best sources of vitamin K.

HD: Do you think most people produce enough vitamin K to offset any potential...?

RP: I don’t think it’s reliable to count on your intestinal bacteria, because so many things can interfere.

HD: We’ll be getting on the subject of endotoxin a bit later. And that’s also tied up with diabetes, that’s pretty interesting. So what do you think is realistic in terms of a dose of aspirin?

RP: If your vitamin K is OK, I think it’s fine to take 2 or 3 hundreds mg every day. And if it’s to correct a problem, such as diabetes or some chronic inflammatory problem, then I know people who have temporarily taken 6 or 7,000 mg a day, like 20 standard aspirin tablets, for example.

HD: A little bit off base, I have heard of somebody got a recovery from HIV from using high doses of aspirin.

RP: Yes. There was a study, and the government canceled it, when it was going to be too successful, because it would be terrible for the drug industry.

Caller: I have a couple of questions. One is about liver enzymes, I have a high ALT (Alanine transaminase); any suggestions?

RP: When anything is stressed, any cell… for example, just hypothyroidism lowers the energy production of the cell, makes it to tend to take up water. And when it takes up water, it becomes somewhat porous, and its natural enzymes leak out into the blood stream. And just by looking at the type of enzyme, you can’t be sure whether it’s coming from a leg muscle that you’ve strained or overstressed, or a heart muscle that is being stressed, or the liver. The liver is usually the place where they look for enzymes, they’re concentrated in the liver, and so, ALT is one of those.

Caller: My other question is about leafy greens. What’s a good amount to have? I cannot digest vegetables. I use leafy greens for broth, and I do raw foods, which is the only thing I can digest. How much would you suggest I have per week? To meet my nutritional needs?

RP: The cooked greens, if you eat it by the cups and the quarts, it’s an adequate source of protein. But if you aren’t eating it as your main food for protein, then a 1/2 cup to a cup a day will provide your vitamin K, and a generous amount of magnesium and calcium. Those are the nutrients that quickly cook out of it into the broth. And so, if you drink only the water that you cooked a cup or so of leaves in, then you get a little supplement of magnesium and calcium.

Caller: OK, what about raw juicing?

RP: It’s pretty irritating to the intestine. Plants put their most intense defensive toxins into their seeds, but their next most intense irritants and toxins are in the leaves, because they don’t want to be grazed. So they put chemicals in it that tend to block your digestive enzymes. Cooking destroys most of those toxins or reduces them. If you eat them raw, and if you’re not a ruminant that has evolved a stomach to handle raw leaves, then you’re most likely will have some digestive problems.

Caller: I want to come back to aspirin real quick if that’s ok. Dr Peat, I’ve heard you in a podcast mention that aspirin is helpful in reducing tumor growth, and I was just wondering about that. Then the other thing is I don’t know if you’re familiar with an aspirin powder, it’s called BC, and actually has caffeine in it. And what I’ve been doing, just because I have a knee that hurts me often (have had quite a bit of pain in it, it depends on what I’m doing), but I actually have been putting baking soda and a magnesium salt (epson salt), and sometimes I’ve even put some magnesium chloride in. And then this aspirin with this caffeine and the baking soda, which I‘ve heard you said about the baking soda, I’ve heard you say that it creates a gradient that pulls those things into the body. Is that also correct?

RP: It (baking soda) has diuretic effects and some anti inflammatory effects from the carbon dioxide itself. And the caffeine acts on some of the same enzymes as aspirin does with anti inflammatory effect. And they both increase your cell respiration. And they both suppress nitric oxide, which is one of our central risky pro-inflammatory mediator which happens to poison the mitochondrial respiration, blocking it directly. So, caffeine and aspirin have multi-levels of defense of the mitochondria.

Caller: Would that be pulled in through the skin effectively? More than likely?

RP: Caffeine goes in through the skin more easily than aspirin. But yes, some aspirin is absorbed.

Caller: And then, everything that you’ve just said, I guess, applies to tumor growth (to a certain degree) as well?

RP: Yeah, inflammation and respiratory defect is the motor for cancer growth. It happens that if you restore energy production in the mitochondria, you’re also lowering the inflammatory stimulants that activate cell division and spreading.

Caller: I had a couple of questions for Dr Peat about substances that induce the process of Mitochondrial uncoupling, which i believe reduces ATP production and generates body heat instead. These substances have generated a fair amount of controversy in the past. So, my first question is: is this reduced ATP production in anyway harmful to the body?

RP: Yeah, actually. The uncouplers, when it’s a mild degree of uncoupling, it prevents some of the stray free radical products that happens in the more relaxed, lower intensity mitochondrion. So, they know that you reduce free radical damage a little by increasing uncoupling. But another substance which uncouples mitochondria also lowers ATP a little bit and greatly protects the mitochondrion from free radicals, that’s fructose! Fructose absorbs excess phosphate ions (probably that’s related to why it lowers the ATP). But the absorption of the phosphate ions by fructose is, in a way, a direct defensive system of the oxidative system: because the pyruvate dehydrogenase enzyme ,which is suppressed in cancer, is why dichloroacetate is gaining so much interest, because it’s a chemical that reactivates pyruvate dehydrogenase and improves the cancer metabolism in a great variety of tumors. But simply lowering the free phosphate in the cell tends to reactivate this crucial enzyme at the top of the energy producing chain. And when you are supplied with aspirin, caffeine and fructose, for example, you’re not calling on FFAs. If you load up the cell with excess FFAs (for example, from some stress), the FFAs reverse all of those processes; they block pyruvate dehydrogenase by making more phosphate ions available, where the sugars instead bind them, and lower the free phosphate ions. Fatty acids increase them (the phosphate ions) and then tend to poison the crucial enzyme.

Caller: OK (I guess I’ll listen to that one more time on the radio). So basically, this process of producing heat, does that, in any way, negatively affect the thyroid? Isn’t thyroid supposed to generate heat in the body? This uncoupling that generates heat, does it harm the thyroid?

RP: It increases heat among other things, and keeping your body temperature up to an efficient high level makes all of your tissues more stable.

Caller: So, it doesn’t harm the thyroid in any way, this process of uncoupling?

RP: No, the thyroid is very compatible with that; keeping yourself slightly hyperthyroid doesn’t stress anything, and it keeps down those stress signals.

Caller: Dr Peat, you mentioned earlier about using niacinamide, and I was wondering if there’s a minimum dose, a range and an upper limit for people to try it.

RP: I’ve seen really great results from something in the range of 150 to 300 mg per day divided into 3 smaller doses. But I also know people who have taken over 1000, 1500 mg for a very long time and haven’t had problems. But, mainly because of all of the manufactured supplements are gonna have trace allergenic impurities, I think it’s best to find the smallest amount that works for you.

Caller: Does niacinamide need to be balanced out with any other B vitamin or other supplement?

RP: Thiamine, vitamin B1 works with the respiratory enzymes. And of course you need all of them: B12, B1 and biotin are very closely involved with the respiratory apparatus.

Caller: You’ve discussed many times in your articles and interviews about the benefits of vitamin B6. And some people have found that they do better with the active form “P-5-P” (or PLP: Pyridoxal 5'-phosphate ). And, I was wondering if, aside from trial and error), there’s any other indicators or history
that a person may find that they need the active form, as opposed to the typical form.

RP: With either form of vitamin B6, it’s possible to overdose. I think people are finding that the active form is easier to overdose with; it used to take several hundred mg several months to produce toxic effects on the nerves; but some people are seeing that with as little as 50mg over a prolonged time with the active form. I think it’s good to start with 10mg which is far beyond the normal day’s requirement. 10 to 20 mg is almost always all a person needs therapeutically of B6.

Caller: You’ve discussed using the carrot salad to lower the intestinal load of bacteria. And I was wondering if after some months time, a person doing that hasn’t found relief, (or their symptoms haven’t been relieved), if they were to try the drug Metronidazole (also goes by the name of Flagyl), used for treatment for small intestine bacterial overgrowth? Will that be perhaps a safe drug for a person to try after some time?

RP: That happens to be a pretty toxic antibiotic, so I think it’s good to try a lot of other things first. There are some bacterial products that are more actively germicidal in the intestine, there’s one that comes from Ukraine, called Biosporin that has very germicidal bacteria in it. I think there are some intestinal detoxifying or disinfecting antibiotics that are a lot safer than Metronidazole.

Caller: I understand there’s a link with SIBO (Small Intestine Bacterial Overgrowth), or several conditions; one of them is rosacea, for example. And there’s a connection with hydrogen producing bacteria, or endo-methane producing bacteria. And therefore, Flagyl (or Rufaxamin; it’s another antibiotic that has gone too), if it’s not safe, is there one that you would recommend before that?

RP: No, I haven’t had experience with those.

Caller: This is going back quite a way, I think 6 months, and in an interview you mentioned anecdotally about people with leukemia, treating it with raw eggnogs. I was wondering if you can elaborate on that, it’s very interesting.

RP: They were using the whole eggnog. I don’t think it was just the white.

Caller: Yes, the yolk primarily.

RP: Fresh egg lecithin itself, has been shown to have antiviral activities, antibacterial too, but I think the white of the egg is peculiar for its ability to bind minerals, and the combination of the lecithin and the raw egg white probably has some special germicidal effect.

HD: The first caller wanted to know about dehydration, and what are the water requirements of the body? And the other question was if you can give a brief explanation of the difference between nutritional yeast and brewer’s yeast.

RP: There are actually many strains of these yeasts, and they taste different; the brewer’s yeast actually comes from a brewery, generally has a hops flavor in it, and so it’s very bitter. The yeasts have been grown especially for making nutritional supplements, and so, some of them have added chemical substances; I think selenium is one they commonly add. But basically, the yeast chemistry in itself is always rich in B vitamins.
And hydration, keeping your cell energy up, I think is the basic thing. You want to keep the cell water under control and neither too hydrated nor too dehydrated. And the regulating minerals, sodium, potassium, magnesium and calcium is part of that, keeping a balance between intracellular water and extracellular water. But the thing about drinking extra water when you’re not thirsty, I think thirst is almost always a good indicator of how much you need. If you’re drinking for example milk and fruit juice, that can provide all the water you need, and to try to add extra water can disturb your mineral balance and your hormone balance. For example, too much water in relation to the minerals, tends to increase your prolactin, because prolactin is a water and salt regulating hormone, among other things. So, it’s probably more important to emphasize not to push excess water rather than to remind people to drink, because usually thirst tells them when.

Caller: I just wanted to know what would you apply on your face to get rid of age spots, please.

RP: It depends on what they are made of. Sometimes high estrogen or high polyunsaturated fats can cause a fairly sudden appearance of age spots at an area that’s irritated or sun exposed. And changing your diet away from the polyunsaturated fats and adding a little vitamin E, rubbing some vitamin E into those spots can help to remove them. There are enzymes that can break down even fairly old long standing lipofuscin pigment, and vitamin E is an activator of that. If it’s largely a sun-induced spot, you might try rubbing some niacinamide; dissolve a high-potency niacinamide tablet in a tiny amount of water and apply that to the spot every day for a week or two; it fades a lot of the pigments.

Caller: Dr Peat I think it’s because of estrogen and PUFAs, for a long period of time, and also the vitamin E you get in capsules always has some soy in it, is that ok? Or should I go for a purer form of vitamin E?

RP: I think a pure, high potency vitamin E is good, 100 or 200 mg orally is probably enough. But you can put a little on the spot, and sometimes that helps the enzymes to clear it out.

HD: So Dr Peat, getting back to the topic of tonight, about the treatment with aspirin you mentioned niacinamide as very good regulators of FFAs expression. I want to ask, even in the presence of supplemented insulin per se, for people that are truly insulin diabetic, the nerve damage, neuropathy, these processes that diabetics still get even in the presence of insulin, and those sensation-loss they get, particularly in the feet or the soles of the feet, which are the initial symptoms of the so-called sugar excess syndrome: how is this process at odds with excess sugar, when sugar is a vital energy-producing currency?

RP: I’ve gone through many articles, recently I watched a video by Gershom Zajicek, who’s a very amazing biology medical professor in Israel. He has a very good understanding of physiology, and he has a video on diabetes and explains how the increased blood glucose is called for by the brain to make up for its needs. But after explaining the compensatory effect of high glucose for the brain, he uses the term glycotoxic, for the harmful effects supposedly of glucose. And, basically, he just resorted to a word to explain how glucose affects the other organs. And, looking through the literature, I see that people do that without really explaining what’s happening, why extra glucose would be harmful; if it’s within a moderate osmolarity, the mechanism just isn’t explained, even though they say it’s doing the harm. The changes in the nerves, include everything that is failing because of lack of energy. And when the cells are known to be living on fatty acids, and the fatty acids are intrinsically disturbing the metabolism of phosphate, turning off glucose energy production, slowing it down, even activating nitric oxide, the respiratory inhibitor, you know that the energy of the cell being reduced, is going to slow all kinds of repairing processes. And, incidentally, in the pancreas, glucose stimulates regeneration of new insulin producing cells. And it’s the bad balance (too much FFAs and not enough glucose to defend the cells) that causes them to die. And anywhere else that a cell is deprived of it’s energy and forced to eat fatty acids instead… that’s now well recognized in heart failure: a simple treatment such as niacinamide can restore great amounts of heart energy production and improve the failure. Drugs are being developed to do the same as aspirin and niacinamide. But in nerves, one of the effects of failing energy is the inability to make cholesterol and convert cholesterol into the neurosteroids; when a nerve (or its supporting cells, the glial cells) when they’re injured by anything, including lack of glucose or a lack of oxygen, they not only stop producing the defensive steroids from cholesterol, but they begin producing estrogen. And the diabetic brain and nerves, and all of the diabetic tissues, have more aromatase than a normal person of the same age (more of the enzymes which convert androgens to estrogens). And the estrogen in a healthy person… when a nerve is stressed, the activation of these enzymes which are normally inactive in a nerve… stress activates the production of a little estrogen which sends out signals to the surrounding cells to cause them to produce pregnenolone, progesterone, allopregnanolone and a whole range of protective nerve steroids...but if you don’t have the energy, you get stuck in producing just the estrogen, which keeps things excited and stressed.​
 
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burtlancast

burtlancast

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I think he said three instead of free, they aren't free when combined (as in LCTs, etc). I can be wrong though..

I think you're probably right.
But it doesn't really change anything to the meaning of the sentence, so...

:thumbsup:
 

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HD: Normally if someone was on... because I know you’re a great advocate of saturated fats, butter, and coconut oil in particular. And very much against the negative health impacts of the liquid oils, and fish oil in particular. If somebody is consuming a lot of butter, milk, whether is full fat or semi-fat and coconut oil, the fats therein, when they are stored as fat, they don’t have the same destructive, oxidative effects when they are liberated?

RP: Yeah, if you store a very saturated fat, like the Indians make ghee, by removing the water-soluble material, a pure fat oil, or coconut oil which is 98% saturated, those things keep for years without breaking down. But if you leave a bottle of safflower, or corn oil, or linseed oil open, within hours or days you can detect spontaneous oxidation of it in the air. And that happens at body temperature, with the high oxygen content of your blood; it happens very quickly with the polyunsaturated fats. Interestingly, the biological oxidation is pretty much the opposite because if you have two types of fat circulating in your blood stream, one saturated fatty acid and one polyunsaturated, your muscles will be able to oxidize the saturated fat preferentially, the polyunsaturated fat tends to go into storage, if you eat more than you can oxidize. So it tends to be fattening if you eat a little extra of the polyunsaturated, because it stores more easily. But your fat cells can also oxidize saturated fat, and so they live on the saturated fat they have stored,. So, over the years stress is more likely to release the polyunsaturated fats making stress an increasing problem with age.
@jyb @cantstoppeating
I though that both of you would be interested in that brief highlight.
 

jyb

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@jyb @cantstoppeating
I though that both of you would be interested in that brief highlight.

I'd like to see a proof that I'm accumulating pufa while eating dairy or meat. I don't accumulate body fat (weight and tone are stable over the years), so the implication of that claim is that whatever fat I have has turned pufa by now -- which I don't believe. I would test it over the years with blood tests or whatever if it were cheap and possible.
 

Amazoniac

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I'd like to see a proof that I'm accumulating pufa while eating dairy or meat. I don't accumulate body fat (weight and tone are stable over the years), so the implication of that claim is that whatever fat I have has turned pufa by now -- which I don't believe. I would test it over the years with blood tests or whatever if it were cheap and possible.
As highlighted, it should only be a problem if it's in excess of what you can burn/use.

--
It's often mentioned here that the proportion in each meal also matters; however I don't understand how fats that don't have structural role can have influence in that proportion. In other words, how eating MCTs can help balance some PUFA. An example would be that mayo recipe posted somewhere on the forum.

--
 

Peater Piper

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Chris Masterjohn mentioned briefly that polyunsaturated fat may be burned preferentially to saturated fat in order to remove them from the body. He based that on saturated fat requiring slightly higher intakes of choline than pufa.

The initial experiments showing the protective effect of casein suggested that long-chain saturated fats might be more problematic than unsaturated fats or medium-chain fats (Figure 2a). As it turns out, saturated fats actually increase the need for choline slightly more than polyunsaturated fats (Figure 2b).85 Why this happens is unclear, but it may be that the body is quick to burn polyunsaturated fats for energy, since having them hang around is so dangerous. After all, if they hang around, they are likely to contribute to oxidative damage.

Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease - Weston A Price
 

jyb

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As highlighted, it should only be a problem if it's in excess of what you can burn/use.

From my own conclusion, it's one out of 2 or 3 core claims RP makes that explains why he recommends eating more glucose and less fatty foods even if highly saturated (when he does). I read that claim more as something very central, it's not just a risk of accumulation but almost a fatality; in that scenario our fats slowly and inevitably turn into pufa due to eating them even if small amount. Although I think it is a very interesting idea (there are not many different theories of ageing I can think of), I'm not convinced by it and I would need to see more discussion. Of course if someone in modern times gains fat, I understand that it is likely to be pufa and the consequences are not good. So I'm not talking about that situation. I'm talking about the idea that it is the top driver of ageing for someone somewhat healthy who doesn't accumulate fat nor relies much on pufa (low pufa in the diet): I could think of other drivers that seem to me more problematic. And that has a lot of consequences on my dietary choices, my balance between glucose and saturated fatty acids for energy (other than the more concrete considerations such as simply what makes me feel healthy).
 
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