Hey My Dudes [PUFA, Ketosis, Insulin Resistance]

[Amazoniac]

I will only describe what I did, and not touch on any the mechanisms by which I came to know what I know. I have zero proof for any mechanism behind the diagnostic or treatment modalities that I have used, and do not want to describe how they are performed.

Mine was a case of a chronic Listeria infection, inherited from my Mother since birth, and which stayed with me until I eradicated it just over a year ago (24 years total). All joint issues, digestive issues, emotional imbalances, and basically everything else, could be attributed to this pathogen.

Back was weakened by this pathogen some time in my teens, leading to L3-L4 disk herniation when I was 18 (while deadlifting a sub-maximal load). Herniation led to many complications, amongst which were the digestive and immune function, and was also the start of much more severe food sensitivities.

NOTE: I've seen structural issues in the joints and fascia lead to some crazy complications which I would never have thought possible until I actually saw them in person. Example: one lady couldn't lactate / breastfeed her child. Turned out to be a misaligned disc in the midback. Osteopractic re-alignment of that disc it allowed for lactation to resume almost instantly.

Some more details about this in the interview that Jason Prall did with Dr Josh Lamaro -- Osteopathy, Fascia, Tensegrity, & the Body's Supercomputer . Note that I am biased, because I know Jason personally, and Josh is a good friend . But the stuff they touch on is relevant to this discussion.

"Bio-Energetics" includes the ability to transfer that energy through the body. Fascia and collagen meridians serve as a primary medium through which that energy transfer occurs.​

All the members of the Listeria strain can become intracellular pathogens, and are not easily eliminated. Antibiotic treatment did not work, and many previous herbal remedies also failed because of lack of specificity in diagnosis (I didn't know I had Listeria until the middle of 2015).

The treatment protocol was very simple once accurate diagnosis was found, and the main active substances were Holarrhena Antidysenterica and Clove Extract, along with about another 6 "support supplements" (stuff like Manganese and Methylfolate to support methylation pathways).

I also had my back re-aligned through a particular type of manipulation, done by this osteopath (which I will not name) would pioneered a custom built table which can pull on the back at specific angles, and literally break apart any scar tissue. This fixed the lingering issues with the disk herniation.

----
Metabolism is Broken. But why?

This is yet another thread of speculation to which I have zero proof, and to which I do not want to have further discussions about. What I state below should be treated as mere interesting speculation. I am not a doctor, and all observational claims are derived from my privilege of being able to observe particular medical professionals work (won't say who .... but I guess I already gave it away that I know Dr Lamaro personally).

The Claim: many invasive elements have adapted over billions of years to be able to chronically interfere with metabolism, whilst remaining un-purgeable by the body's own defence mechanisms.

We're talking about various kinds of bacteria, fungi, archaea, and viri, which can infect the organism, integrate itself into important pathways of that organism, and compromise it at a very low level. Such organisms would share many of the same chemical pathways as the higher organism, and compete on those pathways. eg: methylation being such a simple pathway (adding or subtracting a CH3 group), is a very ancient pathway, and is very commonly disrupted.

NOTE: almost always, people who have such low level compromise have a chronic infection. The mainstream will label this as "Genetic", without acknowledging that invasive elements can alter genetic expression from within the cell.​

Once such an infection takes hold, no amount of dietary changes or "energy additions" serve to fix such people. The old Chinese Medicine methodology must be performed -- First Purge the negative element, then Tonify the body's endogenous systems, then Balance out various needs of the body. Without the purgation step, all we are doing is "feeding the invasion".

However, this field of study is boring to Western Medicine , and the study of chronic infections has been largely abandoned. The symptoms are too generic, which is a horrible fit for Western Medical Diagnosis.

eg: Syphilis is just termed "the great mimick" -- it is just acknowledged that symptoms will be non-specific, but then there is not much understanding into how it works, and treatment is often just generic as well (antibiotics, then pray that it works). It is known that the bacteria responsible for this infection can reside in the nervous system, and thereby avoid any detection via serum tests. It is also known that even in this state, patients can "appear asymptomatic".

Such an infection is chronic, can easily escape detection, and can lead to major cumulative stress on the body over time. I can guarantee that there are many other (thousands and thousands) of such chronically infective bacteria out there, to which Western Medicine has overlooked. Another example is Lyme Disease, to which only a few of the Borrelia species are believed to be implicated (what about the others? how would you know that the Person has "Lyme Disease", when the symptoms are so generic?).

Chinese Medicine on the other hand, is purely observational, and treatments are based on these observations. This makes it more useful in treating such chronic infections. The big weakness is the lack of rigorous mechanistic study, and archaic descriptions like "this herb cures dampness in the spleen" dominate.

But back to the topic of this section -- "Why is my Metabolism screwed in the first place?". I've seen enough cases of patients to which no amount of dietary or lifestyle intervention solves the fundamental issues with metabolism. Be it removal of non-native EMF stress, adherence to circadian cycles, hormone replacement, avoidance of particular foods, etc .... all are just "Stress Relievers".

From a clinical perspective, such interventions can make certain patients "feel a lot better". This is often enough to establish oneself as a great medical practitioner. Business is business .

However, such interventions almost never restore robustness (unless they inadvertently remove the invasive element by some good fortune). "Robustness" in the sense that I used to get skin breakouts when I ate ice cream, to now being able to drink beer, eat Korean Fried Chicken, and have no negative side effects while keeping my visible abs.

Only removal / purgation of the stress-inducing invasive element can lead to recovery of metabolic capacity, and ultimately good health.

....

Thank you for the thoughtful reply.

Many people come here everyday asking for help, while eating and living reasonably well; some of them might also be going through other uncontrolled chronic infections like you were..
Did you feel awful when you started that treatment? Because of the dillema: how to persist if you are unsure if you are creating even more problems? If you felt awful, did you have some clues that it might work, or you just trusted and went on?
Your problem with casein was related to the infection? If so, how do you think that they interacted?

 

[tyw]

Thank you for the thoughtful reply.

Many people come here everyday asking for help, while eating and living reasonably well; some of them might also be going through other uncontrolled chronic infections like you were..
Did you feel awful when you started that treatment? Because of the dillema: how to persist if you are unsure if you are creating even more problems? If you felt awful, did you have some clues that it might work, or you just trusted and went on?
Your problem with casein was related to the infection? If so, how do you think that they interacted?

No. The treatment protocol was tested specifically for me and administered by myself accordingly. Recovery was a smooth process, and is almost always a smooth process in all observed patients.

Casein is known to have many interactions with the immune system. That information can be looked up pretty easily, so I won't repeat it here.

Of course, at the end of the day, it is up to the immune system to decide whether or not a particular compound is a threat. Therefore, whether or not the immune system reacts with a disproportionate amount of eagerness towards a particular compound is going to depend on the state of the immune system at the time.

NOTE: even if you don't believe in the "Auto-immune attack of own cells" model, we have to admit that if the immune system is over-activated, this is "wasted energy" that is diverted towards trying to get rid of an invader, while simultaneously shutting off processes in cells which the body may now perceive as "too dangerous to continue in the face of invasion".

In other words, immune system over-reaction is still going to cause palpable negative systemic side effects, regardless of what model of damage we attribute as the basis of the trigger.​

My immune system was particularly eager at seeing casein as a threat. Didn't matter if it was A1 or A2 casein, sheep's milk or cow's milk or whatever, organically sourced or local or factory produced, my immune system would react to casein very eagerly.

I know it wasn't the other components of milk, since whey protein and raw whey did not give me issues.

Today, I will still react to large amounts of casein (say if I eat >70g of dairy protein), but 3 scoops of ice cream is fine. The immune reaction to casein has obviously not been entirely eliminated, but it has become much less eager, and I would say "more accurately calibrated to actual threat levels".

The Helminths that I have in me also modulate the immune system a fair bit.

....

 

[Blossom]

The Helminths that I have in me also modulate the immune system a fair bit.

Fascinating...
Do you happen to have any recommended reading on the subject?

 

[jyb]

Only removal / purgation of the stress-inducing invasive element can lead to recovery of metabolic capacity, and ultimately good health.

Would you disagree with RP when he recommends an extremely general treatment like he usually does (you know thyroid support, eat whatever to increase your metabolism, change your lifestyle to eliminate stress, etc)? In one way, it is an extreme view because it suggests almost diseases can be fixed by the same protocol. It is quite convincing I must say, though it doesn't always seem to work in practice for people with chronic problems (for which conventional medicine doesn't help either, conventional being the other extreme - one pill for each symptom, no overall view).

 

[Amazoniac]

Would you disagree with RP when he recommends an extremely general treatment like he usually does (you know thyroid support, eat whatever to increase your metabolism, change your lifestyle to eliminate stress, etc)? In one way, it is an extreme view because it suggests almost diseases can be fixed by the same protocol. It is quite convincing I must say, though it doesn't always seem to work in practice for people with chronic problems (for which conventional medicine doesn't help either, conventional being the other extreme - one pill for each symptom, no overall view).

Ray's view seems to be that infections are secondary to a weakened state, and that therapeutic measures can only work if the basics are sorted.
I was reading Broda Barnes' book on heart attacks and he mentioned that people who were weak at birth and contracted infections were now being treated (for the infections) and survived. But their weakened state or their bad environment, the reasons why they got the infections in the first place, weren't being addressed, so they gradually developed problems, such as the common heart attack.

Op, don't worry because this subject is still under the umbrella of insulin sensitivity; because anything that creates excessive inflammation (including infections) can lead to insulin resistance and other metabolic problems..

 

[tyw]

Fascinating...
Do you happen to have any recommended reading on the subject?

I can only talk about things from an intellectual perspective . In terms of actual treatment, that is a lot more complicated, and seems o depends on the particular individual's context.

The attached paper gives a brief overview of the topic. An easier explanation would be:

- Helminths don't want to get killed by their host.
- Helminths are very ancient, and have evolved ways to not get killed by their host, without killing the host; They want the host to survive, while taking its nutrients.
- The areas which they reside in humans are tightly couple to the human immune system (eg: GI tract).
- They seem to modulate the immune system to prevent themselves from being killed.
- The happy side effect for humans is more controlled immune regulation toward foreign substances in the gut.
- It could be argued that humans evolved in the context of chronic low-grade helminth infection; they are "natural immune regulators".

Note of course that too many worms are obviously "bad", from the perspective that they take over too much of the immune response to gut-borne substances. This is the case when you see infections numbering in the thousands of worms. For reference, I derived all the benefit from just a total of 25 hookworms and whipworms.

The absence of chronic helminth infection today is likely due to the wearing of shoes, and the better sanitation conditions. We are no longer exposed to the shallow latrines, damp conditions, and barefoot infection pathways necessary for their infection.

Actual treatment seems complicated, since it is a constant interaction between the parasite and one's immune system. People who are already sick, and don't have the ability to regulate their own immune system in the first place, don't seem to do well with further modulation by helminths.

Legality of such treatment is also a hurdle to cross. I acquired mine from some grey zone supplier whom a friend my mine knew, and whom manages to cultivate the worms in Mexico.

As usual, I don't have any treatment recommendations.

----

Would you disagree with RP when he recommends an extremely general treatment like he usually does (you know thyroid support, eat whatever to increase your metabolism, change your lifestyle to eliminate stress, etc)? In one way, it is an extreme view because it suggests almost diseases can be fixed by the same protocol. It is quite convincing I must say, though it doesn't always seem to work in practice for people with chronic problems (for which conventional medicine doesn't help either, conventional being the other extreme - one pill for each symptom, no overall view).

Yes, I will disagree with Peat. @Amazoniac roughly described Peat's perspective, and I would agree with that regarding the more virulent, acute infections (which are usually tropical pathogens).

But for chronic infections, from what I've seen in real-world scenarios in today's world, that is false. (emphasis on "Today's World", see sidenote indent block below)

Strong metabolism begets cell intelligence, which then begets a strong metabolism -- see Guenther Albretch-Buehller's work on cell intelligence and genomic expression, which explains how light communication signals generated via metabolism, are the source of cell communication and hence better decision making over time (ie: intelligence).

This is a "closed circuit" in many ways, and unless compromised by a side channel, should not fail. IMO, this explains why "naturally strong" individuals never seem to be compromised despite the stressors put on them. I use "strong" here to refer to the ability for mitochondria to maintain their function, despite external stressors.

As a sidenote (without any proof whatsoever): people have been becoming innately weaker over time across the globe, and there is not much one can do about the "innate potential" you'd been given at birth (by your maternal mitochondrial line).

A compromised mother will always pass a "weakened mitochondrial line" down to their children, who will then be weaker again when they pass their genes to their children. This leads to a downward spiral.

We can speculate on the causes, though I am personally less interested in the exact details of these consistent environmental stressors over time. I remain more interested in how to cope despite being a "weaker" person.

NOTE: it is my opinion then, that many of the things that strong people can get away with apply to weaker people. Peat himself was born decently robust. He can benefit from seemingly miraculous Pregnenolone or DHEA treatment recoveries, because his cells are already strong enough to know how to deal with the signal of these youth hormones.

Hormones are just a signal to the cell. Hormones do not do the actual work to "re-establish youth". All they do is tell the body that "it is OK to turn on the youth programs now". Clinically speaking, we are interested in Hormone Response, and weak people do not respond as robustly to hormones (just ask the people on 200mg of progesterone a day, and seeing little effects).

BOOK: I think that 'Human Longevity' by Dave Valentine is one of the best summaries of mitochondrial function and its relation to health and longevity. It makes the strong case for avoidance of PUFA, and I still see methodologies like "PUFA depletion" as being complementary to infection eradication.​

Therefore why I posed the question, "Why is Metabolism screwed in the first place?". Something has to come in and screw up metabolism at a very basic level, and through entire systems of the body, sabotaging metabolism at the intra-cellular pathway in which it depends on for production.

A small stressor is not enough -- intelligent cells will just clean it up, and that includes stuff like PUFA stress, to which a "smart" cell can decide not incorporate into membranes (which is in fact, what many of the centenarians with FOXO mutations do -- lower mitochondrial PUFA per unit PUFA intake as compared to people without that "good mutation").


Ancient invasive organisms have that capacity to work through covert means and hijack the entire system, while keeping the organism alive, albeit in a chronically compromised state. It is in their best interest for the host to remain alive.

Personally, I do not want to ignore an attack vector like that.

....

 

[BigYellowLemon]

I will only describe what I did, and not touch on any the mechanisms by which I came to know what I know. I have zero proof for any mechanism behind the diagnostic or treatment modalities that I have used, and do not want to describe how they are performed.

Mine was a case of a chronic Listeria infection, inherited from my Mother since birth, and which stayed with me until I eradicated it just over a year ago (24 years total). All joint issues, digestive issues, emotional imbalances, and basically everything else, could be attributed to this pathogen.

Back was weakened by this pathogen some time in my teens, leading to L3-L4 disk herniation when I was 18 (while deadlifting a sub-maximal load). Herniation led to many complications, amongst which were the digestive and immune function, and was also the start of much more severe food sensitivities.

NOTE: I've seen structural issues in the joints and fascia lead to some crazy complications which I would never have thought possible until I actually saw them in person. Example: one lady couldn't lactate / breastfeed her child. Turned out to be a misaligned disc in the midback. Osteopractic re-alignment of that disc it allowed for lactation to resume almost instantly.

Some more details about this in the interview that Jason Prall did with Dr Josh Lamaro -- Osteopathy, Fascia, Tensegrity, & the Body's Supercomputer . Note that I am biased, because I know Jason personally, and Josh is a good friend . But the stuff they touch on is relevant to this discussion.

"Bio-Energetics" includes the ability to transfer that energy through the body. Fascia and collagen meridians serve as a primary medium through which that energy transfer occurs.​

All the members of the Listeria strain can become intracellular pathogens, and are not easily eliminated. Antibiotic treatment did not work, and many previous herbal remedies also failed because of lack of specificity in diagnosis (I didn't know I had Listeria until the middle of 2015).

The treatment protocol was very simple once accurate diagnosis was found, and the main active substances were Holarrhena Antidysenterica and Clove Extract, along with about another 6 "support supplements" (stuff like Manganese and Methylfolate to support methylation pathways).

I also had my back re-aligned through a particular type of manipulation, done by this osteopath (which I will not name) would pioneered a custom built table which can pull on the back at specific angles, and literally break apart any scar tissue. This fixed the lingering issues with the disk herniation.

----
Metabolism is Broken. But why?

This is yet another thread of speculation to which I have zero proof, and to which I do not want to have further discussions about. What I state below should be treated as mere interesting speculation. I am not a doctor, and all observational claims are derived from my privilege of being able to observe particular medical professionals work (won't say who .... but I guess I already gave it away that I know Dr Lamaro personally).

The Claim: many invasive elements have adapted over billions of years to be able to chronically interfere with metabolism, whilst remaining un-purgeable by the body's own defence mechanisms.

We're talking about various kinds of bacteria, fungi, archaea, and viri, which can infect the organism, integrate itself into important pathways of that organism, and compromise it at a very low level. Such organisms would share many of the same chemical pathways as the higher organism, and compete on those pathways. eg: methylation being such a simple pathway (adding or subtracting a CH3 group), is a very ancient pathway, and is very commonly disrupted.

NOTE: almost always, people who have such low level compromise have a chronic infection. The mainstream will label this as "Genetic", without acknowledging that invasive elements can alter genetic expression from within the cell.​

Once such an infection takes hold, no amount of dietary changes or "energy additions" serve to fix such people. The old Chinese Medicine methodology must be performed -- First Purge the negative element, then Tonify the body's endogenous systems, then Balance out various needs of the body. Without the purgation step, all we are doing is "feeding the invasion".

However, this field of study is boring to Western Medicine , and the study of chronic infections has been largely abandoned. The symptoms are too generic, which is a horrible fit for Western Medical Diagnosis.

eg: Syphilis is just termed "the great mimick" -- it is just acknowledged that symptoms will be non-specific, but then there is not much understanding into how it works, and treatment is often just generic as well (antibiotics, then pray that it works). It is known that the bacteria responsible for this infection can reside in the nervous system, and thereby avoid any detection via serum tests. It is also known that even in this state, patients can "appear asymptomatic".

Such an infection is chronic, can easily escape detection, and can lead to major cumulative stress on the body over time. I can guarantee that there are many other (thousands and thousands) of such chronically infective bacteria out there, to which Western Medicine has overlooked. Another example is Lyme Disease, to which only a few of the Borrelia species are believed to be implicated (what about the others? how would you know that the Person has "Lyme Disease", when the symptoms are so generic?).

Chinese Medicine on the other hand, is purely observational, and treatments are based on these observations. This makes it more useful in treating such chronic infections. The big weakness is the lack of rigorous mechanistic study, and archaic descriptions like "this herb cures dampness in the spleen" dominate.

But back to the topic of this section -- "Why is my Metabolism screwed in the first place?". I've seen enough cases of patients to which no amount of dietary or lifestyle intervention solves the fundamental issues with metabolism. Be it removal of non-native EMF stress, adherence to circadian cycles, hormone replacement, avoidance of particular foods, etc .... all are just "Stress Relievers".

From a clinical perspective, such interventions can make certain patients "feel a lot better". This is often enough to establish oneself as a great medical practitioner. Business is business .

However, such interventions almost never restore robustness (unless they inadvertently remove the invasive element by some good fortune). "Robustness" in the sense that I used to get skin breakouts when I ate ice cream, to now being able to drink beer, eat Korean Fried Chicken, and have no negative side effects while keeping my visible abs.

Only removal / purgation of the stress-inducing invasive element can lead to recovery of metabolic capacity, and ultimately good health.

....

Very interesting.

I think it's very clear and obvious to all of us that the health problems many of us face, go a lot deeper than diet or lifestyle. Why is it that some people have to limit their diet to the extreme, and still suffer from poor health and frailty, while others consume the absolute worst foods (fast-food, alcohol, ect) and remain extremely healthy and vibrant? Obviously something is amiss. My father is a good example of someone like that. He smokes a good amount of cheap, mass-produced "fire-safe cigarettes", he drinks quite a bit, he eats "unhealthy" food (fast-food chains, PUFA everything), he doesn't exercise, he get's bad sleep, yet he's one of the smartest men I know, and look's quite healthy, the only major problem he suffers from is slightly bad dental health and headaches. My mother is similar to him, in that she can eat whatever she wants and remain healthy. Yet when I eat the wrong food, I can get brainfog (though this is lessening), or weakness, or a headache. This "robustness" that my parent's possess, reminds me of your post about parrots, and about how they eat PUFA-laden seeds, yet remain extremely healthy, because they seem to actively displace PUFA from their mitochondria. I imagine something similar is going on in my parents. They also had pretty good childhoods, health wise, my dad especially, as he grew up in the country with plenty of sun, fresh air, fun, and a good diet.

I'm starting to completely lose faith in supplements, unless used as you mention i.e. for specific reasons, and not for the long-term. I don't think our body needs any help. It should run perfectly, as long as it get's the essentials, and if it has nothing dragging it down (like infections). Adding things should only be done if they subtract from a deleterious infection or toxin. For example, adding curcumin can help symptoms, but it doesn't fix you. If our body wanted more Nrf2, it would have upregulated it. Curcumin, like most health supplements, are a band-aid.

I think many of my issues came from getting a rabies vaccine. As a child, I was never robust, but I certainly wasn't weak by any means, and could handle any foods with ease, any lifestyle patterns. While getting the vaccine weekly for about a month, I felt like absolute ***t. I would get it every weekend IIRC, and the week in-between every shot, I felt extremely sick and tired. It sucks because I almost certainly never had rabies, it was just to be on the safe side (our parents found a bat in our house, and wanted me and my brother to be safe).

 

[tyw]

I'm starting to completely lose faith in supplements, unless used as you mention i.e. for specific reasons, and not for the long-term. I don't think our body needs any help. It should run perfectly, as long as it get's the essentials, and if it has nothing dragging it down (like infections). Adding things should only be done if they subtract from a deleterious infection or toxin. For example, adding curcumin can help symptoms, but it doesn't fix you. If our body wanted more Nrf2, it would have upregulated it. Curcumin, like most health supplements, are a band-aid.

I think many of my issues came from getting a rabies vaccine. As a child, I was never robust, but I certainly wasn't weak by any means, and could handle any foods with ease, any lifestyle patterns. While getting the vaccine weekly for about a month, I felt like absolute ***t. I would get it every weekend IIRC, and the week in-between every shot, I felt extremely sick and tired. It sucks because I almost certainly never had rabies, it was just to be on the safe side (our parents found a bat in our house, and wanted me and my brother to be safe).

"Older folk" here usually refers to people born before 1961. I do not consider someone who gets headaches as "strong".

eg: I know this psychiatrist who is in his 80s. Guy breaks his ankle one day, and then goes back to work 3 days later. Similar stories from my relatives, of people getting literally shot up during WW2, and then surviving well into their 80s while perfectly healthy.

This is a different kind of robustness, which afforded many more potential fixes to the people of the Boomer Generation. Not so today.

----

Supplements are needed when they are needed. The body needs exogenous aid in times of need help. This is especially more so the case in today's world.

"Fragile at the mitochondrial level" is not reflective of outward symptoms, and neither do I think it affects potential longevity. "Fragility" is the keyword, meaning that if a stressor comes, then failure is more likely. If there is no stressor, then metabolism hums along.

The issue with today's world is then that of exponentially increased source of stressors, along with inter-generational fragility of the maternal mitochondrial line. Philosophically, I am comfortable with the case of chronic exogenous supplementation being absolutely necessary in particular cases, and do not buy into any of the romanticism of "Paleo Living".

Sidenote: I've seen cases of "Paleo Parents" who let their kids crawl out naked in nature, end up having to deal with Tick Bites and Lyme infections in those kids.

Note that topical Castor Oil seems to be a very good acute treatment for Tick bites, but must be applied as quickly as possible (usually a castor oil soaked bandage pressed onto the skin), and left on until the swelling cause by the bite completely subsides (usually 3-5 days, but sometimes more). Doing so seems to prevent systemic effects. I have no idea how this works.

Absent such acute treatment, chronic systemic issues seem to be able to take hold, and require a whole different set of treatment methods.​

.....

 

[Drareg]

Would you disagree with RP when he recommends an extremely general treatment like he usually does (you know thyroid support, eat whatever to increase your metabolism, change your lifestyle to eliminate stress, etc)? In one way, it is an extreme view because it suggests almost diseases can be fixed by the same protocol. It is quite convincing I must say, though it doesn't always seem to work in practice for people with chronic problems (for which conventional medicine doesn't help either, conventional being the other extreme - one pill for each symptom, no overall view).

Peat doesn't recommend an "extremely general treatment", your creating a straw man here.
He doesn't have a protocol.

Peats advice has helped people with chronic problems, read through the forum.

He has stated several times that once enough damage has been done it may not be reversible,it's may however be "possible" to stabilise the decline.

 

[BigYellowLemon]

"Older folk" here usually refers to people born before 1961. I do not consider someone who gets headaches as "strong".

eg: I know this psychiatrist who is in his 80s. Guy breaks his ankle one day, and then goes back to work 3 days later. Similar stories from my relatives, of people getting literally shot up during WW2, and then surviving well into their 80s while perfectly healthy.

This is a different kind of robustness, which afforded many more potential fixes to the people of the Boomer Generation. Not so today.

----

Supplements are needed when they are needed. The body needs exogenous aid in times of need help. This is especially more so the case in today's world.

"Fragile at the mitochondrial level" is not reflective of outward symptoms, and neither do I think it affects potential longevity. "Fragility" is the keyword, meaning that if a stressor comes, then failure is more likely. If there is no stressor, then metabolism hums along.

The issue with today's world is then that of exponentially increased source of stressors, along with inter-generational fragility of the maternal mitochondrial line. Philosophically, I am comfortable with the case of chronic exogenous supplementation being absolutely necessary in particular cases, and do not buy into any of the romanticism of "Paleo Living".

Sidenote: I've seen cases of "Paleo Parents" who let their kids crawl out naked in nature, end up having to deal with Tick Bites and Lyme infections in those kids.

Note that topical Castor Oil seems to be a very good acute treatment for Tick bites, but must be applied as quickly as possible (usually a castor oil soaked bandage pressed onto the skin), and left on until the swelling cause by the bite completely subsides (usually 3-5 days, but sometimes more). Doing so seems to prevent systemic effects. I have no idea how this works.

Absent such acute treatment, chronic systemic issues seem to be able to take hold, and require a whole different set of treatment methods.​

.....

Yeah, I would agree with you. He's not robust, but definitely stronger than a lot of young people I see.

Jesus. Having that kind of fortitude would be amazing.

The problem with supplements is that I literally have no clue how to accurately target my bodies problems. Do I rely on how I feel alone? Do I rely on genetic testing? These seem like very inaccurate ways of targeting problems within our bodies. I think supplements have their uses, but it requires a lot of thought, otherwise it seem's to f*ck things up even worse (from personal experience).

---

And about your other post:

So you don't believe we can improve our "innate potential"?

Also, interesting paper.

 

[jyb]

Peat doesn't recommend an "extremely general treatment", your creating a straw man here.
He doesn't have a protocol.

Supplementing thyroid or increasing metabolism with food and lifestyle is not a protocol? Fine, call it principles then.

 

[MB50]

Therefore why I posed the question, "Why is Metabolism screwed in the first place?". Something has to come in and screw up metabolism at a very basic level, and through entire systems of the body, sabotaging metabolism at the intra-cellular pathway in which it depends on for production.

The idea of chronic infections is definitely interesting, but I am a little confused as to how bad metabolism needs to be before a testing should be done for a chronic infection. I have pretty much no knowledge of chronic infections and, therefore, it seems like it could be a lot of chasing down something that may not be there if metabolism is screwed from something else like high PUFA+fructose diet. For example, even you didn't expect that it was a chronic infection until last year, and it seems like you searched just about every other avenue. So if this can be a significant issue for others looking to improve health, I wonder what possible information or signs to look out for?

I also know of a person who has chronic lymes disease and this is another very interesting topic. The person I know who has chronic lymes disease was always fairly healthy (at least always on a whole foods diet) and I know other people who eat absolute crap and get bit by 20 ticks a year in the D.C. area where lyme is extremely common. I have read on here that Ray has talked about thyroid function playing a role in the disease, but I always wonder what makes some seemingly very unhealthy people unsusceptible to lymes disease-- of course, it could just be that these people are lucky and haven't gotten bit by an infectious tick.

 

[BigYellowLemon]

My balls were hit by a football today. It sucked. What should I do?

More stress for my body to deal with. Great.

 

[PakPik]

The absence of chronic helminth infection today is likely due to the wearing of shoes, and the better sanitation conditions. We are no longer exposed to the shallow latrines, damp conditions, and barefoot infection pathways necessary for their infection.

Actual treatment seems complicated, since it is a constant interaction between the parasite and one's immune system. People who are already sick, and don't have the ability to regulate their own immune system in the first place, don't seem to do well with further modulation by helminths.

I am from a tropical country and I've never heard about people worrying about not having enough helminth parasites companions, much less pursuing more of them. If anything, many if not a majority of people de-worm themselves, sometimes on a yearly basis, and getting rid of as many worms as possible is seen like a good practice.

If what a person seeks is immunosuppressing themselves through high IL-10 and TGF-beta, they may instead take herbs or substances that increase those cytokines. Such herbs/supplements would yield a more dose-controlled immunosuppresssion, can be discontinued anytime, wouldn't reproduce themselves in the G.I tract with the possibility of robbing the host from nutrients, and wouldn't have the potential of serious complications like worms travelling to the brain forming life threatening cysts, brain calcifications, getting cyst-induced epilepsy, and also to other organs wreaking havoc all over the place (increased risk of liver and gallbladder problems ranging from mild fibrosis up to cancer are just a few examples).

Therefore, it seems in my opinion kind of a romantic idea (at best) and a dangerous idea (at worst) for a person to purposely infect themselves with worms.

I personally wouldn't increase those immunosuppressive cytokines on purpose and I would not advice such a thing -unless there was a clear deficiency due to, for example, some sort of rare genetic disease where there isn't enough production-. Having those immunosuppressive cytokines chronically high is a bad idea for cancer, bacterial, viral, and even protozoan defense. (As a bonus, many people have those already chronically high if they are suffering from chronic high Serotonin or chronic high Prostaglandin-E)

1) Worms may worsen or reactivate viral infections :

• "helminth worms can substantially enhance and re-activate viral infection, with major health implications for tropical medicine."
• "Helminth infection activates TH 2 cells to release IL-4 and IL-13, both of which ligate the IL-4 receptor (IL-4R) on M2 macrophages. In M2 macrophages harboring latent herpesvirus, the IL-4R activates host cell STAT6, which then acts directly on the key viral gene that initiates viral replication. In another scenario, M2 macrophages activated by IL-4 and/or IL-13 directly inhibit the production of virus-specific T cells. Thus, subsequent infection by a virus (norovirus shown) is not controlled."
• "Patients with concomitant HCV and schistosomiasis exhibit a unique clinical, virological, and histological pattern manifested by virus persistence with high HCV RNA titres, higher necroinflammatory and fibrosis scores in their liver biopsies, and poor response to interferon therapy (93–95). This pattern results in a markedly accelerated disease course once chronic HCV infection has been established. "

2) Worms can harm the liver (and other organs, including the brain):

• "Morbidity in humans infected with S. mansoni results primarily from deposition of parasite ova in the portal areas, inducing a T cell-dependent granulomatous response that progresses to irreversible fibrosis and severe portal hypertension in more than 60% of cases"

3) Worms have the potential to worsen all sorts of bacterial, viral and even protozoan infections, since a good majority of them are dealt with the T-helper 1 immune response but exacerbated by the T-helper 2 response (worms decrease Th1 immunty, and tend to increase Th-2 and increase immunosuppressive factors)
This kind of immune shift can be detrimental to cancer as well since anticancer immunity requires a Th-1 effector response:

The information presented comes from the papers:

How helminths go viral: http://maizelsgroup.biology.ed.ac.u...k.maizels2/files/pdf/Maizels-2014-Science.pdf
The pathogen table is from: Boots for Achilles: progesterone's reduction of cholesterol is a second-order adaptation. - PubMed - NCBI

 

[tyw]

@PakPik -- Yes, worms are real issues. I do not make any recommendations to use them.

I should have qualified that in areas where sanitary conditions and habits do not allow for infection to take hold, most people do not have them. eg: when I was in Singapore in the early 90s, the likelihood of people getting worms was low (especially given the history of eliminating them). But my cousins in rural Malaysia would likely still have some low grade infection.

That said, being infected by 25 worms of only 2 species (both of which are small millimeter size worms), and ONLY in the gut, is very different from the hundreds or thousands of worms, in all sorts of places of the body, that cause the issues you mention.

Personally, I weighed the risk of testing out a worm infection against the relative ease and well-known methods of purging them. Since they were easy enough to get rid of, I decided to try them, to good effect.

Again, each person's immune system is different, and only particular helminths will be useful to a particular person. I make no recommendations for any such intervention.

----

The idea of chronic infections is definitely interesting, but I am a little confused as to how bad metabolism needs to be before a testing should be done for a chronic infection. I have pretty much no knowledge of chronic infections and, therefore, it seems like it could be a lot of chasing down something that may not be there if metabolism is screwed from something else like high PUFA+fructose diet. For example, even you didn't expect that it was a chronic infection until last year, and it seems like you searched just about every other avenue. So if this can be a significant issue for others looking to improve health, I wonder what possible information or signs to look out for?

I also know of a person who has chronic lymes disease and this is another very interesting topic. The person I know who has chronic lymes disease was always fairly healthy (at least always on a whole foods diet) and I know other people who eat absolute crap and get bit by 20 ticks a year in the D.C. area where lyme is extremely common. I have read on here that Ray has talked about thyroid function playing a role in the disease, but I always wonder what makes some seemingly very unhealthy people unsusceptible to lymes disease-- of course, it could just be that these people are lucky and haven't gotten bit by an infectious tick.

I do not know what obvious signs there are to look for, because symptoms are so generic. I was given knowledge of some testing methodology, which I then learnt and use to diagnose weaknesses in the system.

Someone like Dr Josh Lamaro came from a different path, whereby he could feel weaknesses in the fascia of his clients, which were concurrent with symptoms faced. Sometimes, these symptoms were manic depression, sometimes it was gut issues, sometimes it was headaches, etc .... completely unspecific, but palpable in the collagen system of the body.

When I was sick, I always had gut issues. My brother always has migraines. Different person, different disease manifestation, and I do not trust my common sense about what is wrong with someone.

I've also seen all sorts of disease profiles, with seemingly no accurate way of common diagnosis. eg: I know a couple of doctors in South East Asia, and was surprised to see O3:O6 ratios which were very low (ie: a lot of "good" Omega 3 fats relative to "bad" Omega 6 fats), and yet were obviously sick with all sorts of different symptoms. All these people were eating junk as far as I was concerned (and anyone who has lived in SEA know how PUFA-laden the food is). Then in the US, what I see with similar sorts of PUFA consumption is excess O6 compared to O3, and are similarly sick.

I personally see zero pattern in what makes people sick. Yes, everyone who is healthy has good metabolism, but to get to that point, the idiosyncratic modality of sickness needs to be addressed.

This doesn't mean that "energy additive" strategies like Low-level Light Therapy will not serve to give a quick boost (they do), but neither do they seem to fix the underlying issue.

This also doesn't mean that fixing one's diet and lifestyle aren't important. In fact, I personally take it as a given that those should be fixed beforehand, and then check if fully recovery is made. If so, then we know it was just a case of "bad habits suppressing your potential", and not "low-level compromise of the system"

NOTE: with the last statement being said, most doctors know that you cannot count on clients to change their bad habits. Clinical fixes need to take that into account, and force the system to recover through whatever means necessary. I personally don't like the methods which some of the doctors I know use because of this (eg: aggressive hormone replacement), but business is business, and if it works to make people "feel better", then they have a market.​

What underlies each chronically ill person's condition seems to be a specific chronic stressor that targets some low-level mechanism. Again, I have seen no pattern, and different mechanisms may be at play with different people.

Note that we also need to bring genetic interplay between the environment into the equation, and viral DNA that gets suppressed in one person whom has had historical evolutionary exposure to that DNA, may be expressed in another person who hasn't had that historic exposure.

Each doctor will have their idiosyncratic toolkit for diagnosis and measurement of progress, and I myself have mine (reminder: I am not a doctor , nor will I ever get involved in providing healthcare). But no, I do not see particular obvious patterns that can be noticed on the surface.

....

 

[CKA]

"anyone who has lived in SEA know how PUFA-laden the food is)."

I've lived in SEA for years and noticed mostly cooking with refined palm or coconut oil, even in some fast food places that I personally confirmed. It's the cheapest oil so that's what's used, which I always thought was fortunate for them.

 

[tyw]

"anyone who has lived in SEA know how PUFA-laden the food is)."

I've lived in SEA for years and noticed mostly cooking with refined palm or coconut oil, even in some fast food places that I personally confirmed. It's the cheapest oil so that's what's used, which I always thought was fortunate for them.

Heheh, I need to qualify once again . "SEA" is unfortunately a little broad. If we're talking the Philippines the likelihood of coconut oil being used is higher. In Indonesia both palm and coconut oil may be used, though depends on where you are. Malaysia has lots of palm oil production capacity too, but "cooking oil" there usually refers to seed oils. All the other SEA countries will more likely be consuming seed oils than any other oil, since those are the cheapest. I probably should have said "Asia in general is PUFA riddend" rather than "South East Asia".

OK. Don't want to derail the conversation any more.

....

 

[EIRE24]

I will only describe what I did, and not touch on any the mechanisms by which I came to know what I know. I have zero proof for any mechanism behind the diagnostic or treatment modalities that I have used, and do not want to describe how they are performed.

Mine was a case of a chronic Listeria infection, inherited from my Mother since birth, and which stayed with me until I eradicated it just over a year ago (24 years total). All joint issues, digestive issues, emotional imbalances, and basically everything else, could be attributed to this pathogen.

Back was weakened by this pathogen some time in my teens, leading to L3-L4 disk herniation when I was 18 (while deadlifting a sub-maximal load). Herniation led to many complications, amongst which were the digestive and immune function, and was also the start of much more severe food sensitivities.

NOTE: I've seen structural issues in the joints and fascia lead to some crazy complications which I would never have thought possible until I actually saw them in person. Example: one lady couldn't lactate / breastfeed her child. Turned out to be a misaligned disc in the midback. Osteopractic re-alignment of that disc it allowed for lactation to resume almost instantly.

Some more details about this in the interview that Jason Prall did with Dr Josh Lamaro -- Osteopathy, Fascia, Tensegrity, & the Body's Supercomputer . Note that I am biased, because I know Jason personally, and Josh is a good friend . But the stuff they touch on is relevant to this discussion.

"Bio-Energetics" includes the ability to transfer that energy through the body. Fascia and collagen meridians serve as a primary medium through which that energy transfer occurs.​

All the members of the Listeria strain can become intracellular pathogens, and are not easily eliminated. Antibiotic treatment did not work, and many previous herbal remedies also failed because of lack of specificity in diagnosis (I didn't know I had Listeria until the middle of 2015).

The treatment protocol was very simple once accurate diagnosis was found, and the main active substances were Holarrhena Antidysenterica and Clove Extract, along with about another 6 "support supplements" (stuff like Manganese and Methylfolate to support methylation pathways).

I also had my back re-aligned through a particular type of manipulation, done by this osteopath (which I will not name) would pioneered a custom built table which can pull on the back at specific angles, and literally break apart any scar tissue. This fixed the lingering issues with the disk herniation.

----
Metabolism is Broken. But why?

This is yet another thread of speculation to which I have zero proof, and to which I do not want to have further discussions about. What I state below should be treated as mere interesting speculation. I am not a doctor, and all observational claims are derived from my privilege of being able to observe particular medical professionals work (won't say who .... but I guess I already gave it away that I know Dr Lamaro personally).

The Claim: many invasive elements have adapted over billions of years to be able to chronically interfere with metabolism, whilst remaining un-purgeable by the body's own defence mechanisms.

We're talking about various kinds of bacteria, fungi, archaea, and viri, which can infect the organism, integrate itself into important pathways of that organism, and compromise it at a very low level. Such organisms would share many of the same chemical pathways as the higher organism, and compete on those pathways. eg: methylation being such a simple pathway (adding or subtracting a CH3 group), is a very ancient pathway, and is very commonly disrupted.

NOTE: almost always, people who have such low level compromise have a chronic infection. The mainstream will label this as "Genetic", without acknowledging that invasive elements can alter genetic expression from within the cell.​

Once such an infection takes hold, no amount of dietary changes or "energy additions" serve to fix such people. The old Chinese Medicine methodology must be performed -- First Purge the negative element, then Tonify the body's endogenous systems, then Balance out various needs of the body. Without the purgation step, all we are doing is "feeding the invasion".

However, this field of study is boring to Western Medicine , and the study of chronic infections has been largely abandoned. The symptoms are too generic, which is a horrible fit for Western Medical Diagnosis.

eg: Syphilis is just termed "the great mimick" -- it is just acknowledged that symptoms will be non-specific, but then there is not much understanding into how it works, and treatment is often just generic as well (antibiotics, then pray that it works). It is known that the bacteria responsible for this infection can reside in the nervous system, and thereby avoid any detection via serum tests. It is also known that even in this state, patients can "appear asymptomatic".

Such an infection is chronic, can easily escape detection, and can lead to major cumulative stress on the body over time. I can guarantee that there are many other (thousands and thousands) of such chronically infective bacteria out there, to which Western Medicine has overlooked. Another example is Lyme Disease, to which only a few of the Borrelia species are believed to be implicated (what about the others? how would you know that the Person has "Lyme Disease", when the symptoms are so generic?).

Chinese Medicine on the other hand, is purely observational, and treatments are based on these observations. This makes it more useful in treating such chronic infections. The big weakness is the lack of rigorous mechanistic study, and archaic descriptions like "this herb cures dampness in the spleen" dominate.

But back to the topic of this section -- "Why is my Metabolism screwed in the first place?". I've seen enough cases of patients to which no amount of dietary or lifestyle intervention solves the fundamental issues with metabolism. Be it removal of non-native EMF stress, adherence to circadian cycles, hormone replacement, avoidance of particular foods, etc .... all are just "Stress Relievers".

From a clinical perspective, such interventions can make certain patients "feel a lot better". This is often enough to establish oneself as a great medical practitioner. Business is business .

However, such interventions almost never restore robustness (unless they inadvertently remove the invasive element by some good fortune). "Robustness" in the sense that I used to get skin breakouts when I ate ice cream, to now being able to drink beer, eat Korean Fried Chicken, and have no negative side effects while keeping my visible abs.

Only removal / purgation of the stress-inducing invasive element can lead to recovery of metabolic capacity, and ultimately good health.

....

Did you notice anything else helped with the acne besides avoiding problematic food?

 

[MB50]

@tyw I think the people are interested in a new blog post on this subject??

 

[BigYellowLemon]

@tyw I think the people are interested in a new blog post on this subject??

Yah !