My Nutritional Science Blog

[Wagner83]

You can figure out if it's fat or not with a skin fold test or an electronic body fat percentage test. If it's shaped like love handles though I wouldn't waste your time, it's fat.

Are you saying that you are lean and had no noticeable fat deposits until this mid-section development post-eating meals of potatoes with coconut oil etc.?

I think all of those things play a part in health, but it's impossible to make an unequivocal statement about it. Some very skinny people who can't gain weight at all eat food that gives them "food comas" often, whereas some obese people don't get that feeling after eating. Personally I get a food coma usually from mixing starches and fats in large amounts, like a meal of rice with a fatty cut of meat. I've seen some attempts at explaining what the food coma is but I am not fully convinced. It seems to have something to do with insulin, but in my experience is related to macronutrient composition more than purely stimulating insulin with sugars.

It shrinks quickly with estrogen/cortisol lowering compounds so I doubt it's mostly fat.

No , I've had it before but diet seems to make it come and go pretty quickly, meals of potatoes + coconut oil and some low fat animal proteins have had very different effects depending on the day : I can get relaxed , warm (if it's warm outside, sometimes to the point of sweating, no cold hands) , or I can get very low energy , very sleepy for a long time, hard to function etc..
Other times I've mixed potatoes and goat cheese with no issues, only steady energy throughout the afternoon. I'm trying to refine my understanding so I can replicate the feeling good, warm without drop of energy most times but it's hard to undertand at times. Maybe being eating so much in favor of carbs means one needs to do some form of short intense exercise often.

 

[Westside PUFAs]

What do you think about someone young and lean who eats low fat (some coconut oil with each meal, sometimes beef) and develops love handles and weight around the belly? I'm not sure if it's fat or water, but it does seem to be connected with encodrine health (estrogens, health) and such meals as 1kg potatoes with small amount of fat and proteins do seem to increase this tendency in my case. I wouldn't compare it to being obese or grossly fat but it does make me fatter.
Doesn't insulin, glycemic index, quantities of carbs in a meal play part? Is food coma not worrying?

In order to answer your question, I need more information.

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[Xisca]

That's the conversation I'm interested in, the molecular physiology of it, I'm not as interested in the psychology of eating.

Kyle, and what if the psychology is in the physiology?

I liked reading your blog post about cancer of the mind at Cancer of the Cell, Cancer of the Mind
I took this quote:
"Not all societies have progressed equally, and even within advanced cultures the first things to be lost in an emergency are the higher order functions of reason, cooperation, and respect for individual rights. A movie theater represents dazzling techno-cultural achievement, but the trampling to death of the weak in a mad dash out of the door when someone yells fire demonstrates the precarious knife-edge on which cultural achievement rests."
and this one
"It requires little imagination to see what a growing number of unreasonable, violent, and tribalistic members of society will do to their surrounding normal citizens and society at large. Cancer of society is a malignant growth of anti-social members; cancer of the mind is a process of reversion."

then you have the pic of system 1 and 2 processing

But there are 3 systems in the triune brain, and each older system is preemptive on the more recent one.
So yes, people in panic will trample others to get to the exit, and a good society should take into account that this can happen because we are still having more than a neocortex! If we just dispise people who are weak enough to react with another brain than the neocortex, then we can only react as you end your writing: "choose a route closer to the cut/poison/burn techniques of today’s oncologists".

So yes there is some process of revertion, that we live all the time, with the use of 3 different parts of the brain that do not have the same age. But the process of revertion is not definitive when it is sane. It has to be flowing, and we have to plan the environment so that when there is a panic trigger, we can manage and stay secure.

Examples:
At the moment I prepare summer, so if a big fire come, I am secure. I cannot do this in urgency, but I can do it when my neocortex has time for it. As ideas come best when you are in the urgent situation (when it is still manageable), I use imagination to forecast as much as possible. Perceive think act is the basis. You can do it over and over again, unless you did it so bad that you die!

Another example to show that the cortex is not always the king...
If a lion comes around, the one who osurvives is not the one who stays thinking "who left the door of the cage open?"!
When you cross the street at the right place, you 1st jump back, and only after, you can stand firm and say "how can this driver not care for peaton's rights?"

If we use our neocortex, we can design social environment taking the autonomic nervous system into account.

I have tried to do this in a children camp I ran for years, and each time I could see a problem, I would solve it by changing something in the context, to induce what I wanted. It worked perfectly, whenever we had the right idea so create the oportune circumstance. Children used to cry the last day because they did not want to go away, and a lot of them were coming back year after year. But I wanted that they go away shining and happy, and it happened.

I just wander why the autonomic system is so little taken into account? Some people told me it was better taken into account in Europe, I dunno...
Maybe you do, in an underlying way that you do not put into words, so I just wanted to ask you about this and how you view it and use it... I was really feeling that it could be very beneficial to add it more into your very good writing. Or maybe you think about it but it is not very well received by readers and better to keep it hidden. After all, no child and no parent knew how I monitored the organisation so that the children would beneficiate a lot from it.

 

[Kyle M]

I just wander why the autonomic system is so little taken into account? Some people told me it was better taken into account in Europe, I dunno...
Maybe you do, in an underlying way that you do not put into words, so I just wanted to ask you about this and how you view it and use it... I was really feeling that it could be very beneficial to add it more into your very good writing. Or maybe you think about it but it is not very well received by readers and better to keep it hidden. After all, no child and no parent knew how I monitored the organisation so that the children would beneficiate a lot from it.

Good points. What I was trying to say is that some of the ideologies and social movements of the modern era damage the ability to use the cerebral cortex and causing people to rely more on the older parts of the brain, as you say. I analogized that to a cell reverting to simpler bacterial metabolism. So I'm not saying the cortex is king, but rather that it's a fragile system that can be run over by the environment. The other thing I find troubling about some modern movements is that they frame it as rational or logical, with window dressing from the world of the cortex, but what they are actually saying and doing is very brain stem in nature. Like when people give up organized, traditional religion and then go on to infuse their secular activities with faith and religious fervor without realizing it. The modern belief in climate change, for example, seems to me no different than a rain dance belief where some ritualistic actions are performed (not using electricity for a day, putting solar panels on your house, feeling bad about consuming things) and with no evidence a result is believed to come about (saving or improving the environment). Evidence doesn't serve to bolster or degrade people's beliefs in these things, but is only used post hoc to rationalize a very emotional, lizard brain belief and superstition.

So yeah, if people can design their environments to work better with their brains troublesome predispositions, that's great, I was commenting on what actually seems to be happening right now. Especially on college campuses, which symbolizes how low-brain tribalism is an attack on intellectualism itself, and uses it's tools and vernacular to appear legitimate.

 

[Kyle M]

It shrinks quickly with estrogen/cortisol lowering compounds so I doubt it's mostly fat.

No , I've had it before but diet seems to make it come and go pretty quickly, meals of potatoes + coconut oil and some low fat animal proteins have had very different effects depending on the day : I can get relaxed , warm (if it's warm outside, sometimes to the point of sweating, no cold hands) , or I can get very low energy , very sleepy for a long time, hard to function etc..
Other times I've mixed potatoes and goat cheese with no issues, only steady energy throughout the afternoon. I'm trying to refine my understanding so I can replicate the feeling good, warm without drop of energy most times but it's hard to undertand at times. Maybe being eating so much in favor of carbs means one needs to do some form of short intense exercise often.

I think you would have to get some kind of physiological measurements to figure out what is happening when you eat one thing over another. You measure temperature and that seems to change and be an indication. It would be interesting to see how you clear glucose, especially from different types of meals that you notice affect you differently.

If it comes and goes, the love handles you're talking about, could it be bloating of the gut?

 

[Wagner83]

In order to answer your question, I need more information.

Age:

Gender of birth (please indicate if you're "trans" as you may be taking hormones)

Height:

Weight (in pounds or kilograms, no "stones"):

All pharmaceutical medications you currently take including any birth control, include the duration:

All pharmaceutical medications you have taken in the past including any birth control, include the duration:

All dietary supplements including "natural" hormones you currently take, include the duration:

All dietary supplements including "natural" hormones you have taken in the past, include the duration:

All recreational drugs you currently take (marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, etc.), include the duration:

All recreational drugs you've taken in the past (marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, etc.), include the duration:

Any kind of nicotine products, include the duration:

Do you have any specific medical conditions (osteoporosis, type one diabetes, HIV, etc.):

Recent and current bowel movement frequency:

Recent and current general diet, be specific as possible:

List any any medical surgeries you've had:

List any cosmetic surgeries you've had:

List any vaccinations you've had:

Activity/movement/exercise on a weekly basis:

What kind of water you drink, if any, and how much:

Do you drink "energy drinks?" (Red Bull, Monster, etc.):

How much non-decaf coffee do you drink?

If female, do you have painful, harsh menstrual cycles?

If female, have you had a hysterectomy or had your ovaries removed?

If male, do you have erectile dysfunction?

Level of sexual satisfaction:

How many hours you sleep per night:

How many time you wake up during sleep:

What hours you sleep from and to, as in "normal" or late like 3am-noon:

What products you put on your skin like make up, soap, and other chemicals:

Approximate location in the world:

How much sunlight you receive directly on your skin and on which parts of the body:

Quality of the air you breathe/environmental exposure to chemicals such as living near a power plant, a freeway, or working in a mine:

How much seafood you eat, how often, and what kind:

If available, recent blood labs taken from you when fasted for at least 12 hours:

What are your health goals?

I answered most of those in a previous mail not sure you can be bothered with it again .

I think you would have to get some kind of physiological measurements to figure out what is happening when you eat one thing over another. You measure temperature and that seems to change and be an indication. It would be interesting to see how you clear glucose, especially from different types of meals that you notice affect you differently.

If it comes and goes, the love handles you're talking about, could it be bloating of the gut?

The thing is for every positive indicator you can have a negative explanation (like increase in temperature or heart rate = stress). The same meals seem to produce different results which makes it harder. Yes maybe checking blood glucose and insulin would be interesting.

I don't think so, it's usually just below and around the waist line, it looks like water retention as far as I can see, not sure what gut bloating would look like but if that makes sense it looks more like it encircles the inner part from below the skin rather than just protruding belly etc..
It could as simple as needing more time on the same diet though (more or less 2-3 weeks so far), after all my health has already vastly improved over the last few months.

 

[Kyle M]

I don't think so, it's usually just below and around the waist line, it looks like water retention as far as I can see, not sure what gut bloating would look like but if that makes sense it looks more like it encircles the inner part from below the skin rather than just protruding belly etc..
It could as simple as needing more time on the same diet though (more or less 2-3 weeks so far), after all my health has already vastly improved over the last few months.

You could try experimenting with more or less salt to affect water retention. Normally that isn't such a localized effect, but if it's something hormonal in that area I suppose something like that could happen.

Seems like a doctor, or someone that does skin fold measurements for body fat, should be able to tell by touching it what it might be.

 

[Xisca]

Good points. What I was trying to say is that some of the ideologies and social movements of the modern era damage the ability to use the cerebral cortex and causing people to rely more on the older parts of the brain, as you say. I analogized that to a cell reverting to simpler bacterial metabolism. So I'm not saying the cortex is king, but rather that it's a fragile system that can be run over by the environment. The other thing I find troubling about some modern movements is that they frame it as rational or logical, with window dressing from the world of the cortex, but what they are actually saying and doing is very brain stem in nature. ...
...and with no evidence a result is believed to come about (saving or improving the environment). Evidence doesn't serve to bolster or degrade people's beliefs in these things, but is only used post hoc to rationalize a very emotional, lizard brain belief and superstition.

Right, good points too, and I am going to intent a triune brain reading of what you said, to explain further what happens... Let's connect all this.

Limbic and lizard brains are often considered together, as they do in the mammalian brain institute.
But they are different, and lizards have no emotions!

Autonomic brain has fight flight and freeze, the famous 3Fs. (apart from non emergency modes like keeping us awake and alive and functional and adapted to the environment, we are a universe working on its own...)
Then came emotions in the animal development. Basically, anger is a frustrated fight, and fear a frustrated flight. If you fight succesfully, you will not get angry, and if you escape successfully, no reason to feel fear. Emotions and sensations are related but not the same!

BTW, believes and superstition are very powerful tools, as imagination is the best the cortex can do to talk with the ancestrial system (you can modify what is not logic by creative meditation that use imagination). But superstition or any imagination without control, can go awry, for sure... And I am the 1st to be afraid of those uncontrolled people that disguise their fears with a rational and logical frame. It is difficult to have awareness, so difficult! If I see what happens as an indication, then I see a lot of fear for the future, and this happens fisrt at the autonomic level. But this level has no word, only the felt sense. So, we perceive the emotion, and the cortex starts to elaborate ideas around the feeling. The cortex is just putting some meaning, to regain some global stability for the overwhelmed system.

You find it troubling, I find it dangerous but explainable, which can be covered as well by "troubling". What is dangerous is a movement, as it can explain from control the same way industrialism as gone out of control and frighten people now! Even when we think really logically, there is another reason behind it, at personal physioemotional level.

What you describe, this "with no evidence of a result", is what is in a freeze response: impotency. This helplessness makes the fight and flight response even less visible physiologically. Social movements are a logical response to unite to people with the same fear, to feel more powerful for fighting. People gather according to their frustrated F or F responses!
Of course the cortex is not king, but we would like it to be, and we would like to control more with it. If we design the right things, then yes the uncontrolable begins to be controlable, but the pathways are totally undirect. The good type of control is not forcing, but building the right dams at the right place of the floading river! This is the art I am interrested in... How can we harness the incredible live force of the older brain system, which is the real chief of the body, the old wiseman. The rest of evolution has built us on top, or around, the autonomic base, and the art is to manage this, as we can manage our bodies to recover health.

The cortex is not the only fragile part run over by the environment, the ANS is the 1st to be run over, and in this moment, it is the one that reacts, because it is quick, and you will remove your hand from the burn before you experiment any emotion or any thought! The cortex looses some control during some time, and all the time when it comes to the heart beats and digestion etc. The cortex just reports in words what is felt by the 2 other parts, so that we can act for a better future, and PLAN our lives to reduce risks. But the cortex can do it only if 1st of all, it let the other 2 "finish the story" of what took control during a difficult event. The cortex has to loose control for the body to do its job, let's say what you fall and move your arms to keep your balance. The problem, that we can solve if we take awareness of our funcionning, is that the cortex takes control too quickly AFTER an event that let the body and ANS work. This leaves some undischarged energy that will come out as fears, angers and somatic issues. The bockage I talk about is the relese of energy that has not be used and all the hormones that have to be processed. It is easier to only considere the behaviour level, and feel that we need some time after a stressful experience. The main cultural barrier is SHAME. We are ashame to let the body reacts, tremble, sweat, sigh, cry, laugh nervously... and we want to go ahead too quick. Animals have a weaker cortex, and that is why they let all this happen. Their cortex is able to let the other brains take care too. We are also able to do it, if we give it a chance. All that is looked at as superstition, like the rain dance belief you talk about, is far from being useless, as it is a way to deal with stress in common. And scientifically, this support the co-regulation of the ANS among participants! This is the difference between being overwhelmed or recover after the difficult moment.

I was just wondering why I had the idea to write this. As I was sure I had some hidden logic, I looked for it and found it. You mentionned interventions for people that are in the paleo trend. I guess I was feeling that talking about the "paleo brain" could be adding a good deal of non-only-logical arguments! My arguments are logical, and they touch the non logical part of us... Paleo people have, above the logic, above any science to support their view, a survival type in their ANS. I have it too, so I know. Whatever can be said at logic level, will not be enough if the hyper alertness is not put into light.

 

[Kyle M]

Right, good points too, and I am going to intent a triune brain reading of what you said, to explain further what happens... Let's connect all this.

Limbic and lizard brains are often considered together, as they do in the mammalian brain institute.
But they are different, and lizards have no emotions!

I would say that emotions are the higher brains interpretation of the limbic systems firings. So lizards don't have emotions, but they have the thing that underlies out emotions. Understandably, we can't really imagine what that thing is like. I would analogize it to having one sense of a perception, rather than all of them. So if you were sensing water, the lizard version would be just the feel of it, whereas the higher brain version would be that plus how it looks and sounds and smells and also the ability to name it. Emotions are like that fully fleshed out interpretation of a basic lizard-brain driver.

I do think religious rituals are important and can be beneficial, but when they are considered scientific it's a total disaster. That's how the mass starvations and killings always happened in the modern world, a religious faith in the state and it's centralized planning that was masked as scientific social planning. It wouldn't have been so readily accepted if it didn't borrow the prestige of the word "science." As climate change, if it was explained without the prestige of science behind it, would not be believed by almost anyone on its own merits.

 

[Xisca]

So lizards don't have emotions, but they have the thing that underlies out emotions.
Emotions are like that fully fleshed out interpretation of a basic lizard-brain driver.

Yes, lizards have no limbic but reptilian. And emotions come out as traduction from the fundamental brain. (I would more give credit of "interpretation" to the cortex, but we humans have a all day dialogue between limbic and cortex, with emotions fueling thinking, and thinking fueling emotions!)
What you say is the basis of why fear comes from flight, and anger comes from fight.
If you are successful at one of the 2 Fs, then you do not need the emotion to speed you up!
Escaping danger makes one feel safe for her life, and at emotion level it creates enthusiam.

I would say that emotions are the higher brains interpretation of the limbic systems firings.

I am not sure I understand you. Emotions come from the limbic brain. And according to the up-said, the underground is autonomic. Autonomic is feeling at body level, limbic is feeling at emotion level, and cortex is mental interpretation, ideas, concept... Of course all connected.

 

[Kyle M]

I am not sure I understand you. Emotions come from the limbic brain. And according to the up-said, the underground is autonomic. Autonomic is feeling at body level, limbic is feeling at emotion level, and cortex is mental interpretation, ideas, concept... Of course all connected.

I meant to write brain stem firings, that as they filter up the more evolved parts of the brain they are added to until they become what we understand as emotion. I'm trying to distinguish between thoughts that originate from the "thinking part" of the brain, vs. thoughts that come from the "feeling part" but are disguised post-hoc by the "thinking part" to look like they are from it.

 

[Xisca]

Now I understand. We have 2 different ways of thinking, one is the intellectual way, as when we study, try to be logical, solve problems etc. And then, there is the pschychological part, that is ashame to be psychological, and this is when we try to interprete why this person did this to us, and why and why and what and how... and we disguise it into a rational thinking that we can explain. That's it?

 

[Kyle M]

Now I understand. We have 2 different ways of thinking, one is the intellectual way, as when we study, try to be logical, solve problems etc. And then, there is the pschychological part, that is ashame to be psychological, and this is when we try to interprete why this person did this to us, and why and why and what and how... and we disguise it into a rational thinking that we can explain. That's it?

I'm not denigrating subconscious or automatic brain function in general, it's necessary for most of what we do. There's no point in thinking about why fire is burning you when it's burning you. The modern age, though, offers a lot of stimuli that look to the old brain like fire but should not be reacted to in a knee-jerk way. And the social movements I'm talking about are outgrowths of stressed old brain activity.

Take climate change as an example again, even the terms like "global warming" are suggestive of fire, burning. The world is "burning up," we won't be able to survive in the sweltering blaze. Those words, like poetry or religious writings or propaganda, activate part of the brain that skips critical thinking. Once the concept of the earth "burning up" is solidified, it is very easy to convince someone of the science behind it because their normal defenses are weakened. They are in a way pulling their hand away from fire and trying to do math at the same time. They will believe what they are told more easily, even to the point of becoming violent against the "deniers" of that truth.

 

[Xisca]

Ho I will never denigrate the Autonomic Nervous System! I know it too well now, at personal level as all of us, and at scientific level somehow (we are all too small to fully enter this universe that works by itself so wisely), and I am less fooled by it as I know I am fooled, so I can watch myself... The ANS is the king, or the queen. Each older of the 3 brain is preemptive upon the more recent ones.

So yes, fear makes us think as survivalist, become violent, treat others as non human that diserve to be treated like we do, and look for people who think like us, to feel less afraid, and target a "common enemy" so that we can hopefully recover some power...

look to the old brain like fire but should not be reacted to in a knee-jerk way

It should not but always will if the fear is too strong, depends of the person. Everybody can have a bad surprise about her own reaction one day in a difficult situation triggering panic.

About warming, they say that we have to save the planet, when we have to save oourselves, because the planet is more likely to be able to recover than us! What is hidden, as people are ashame to admit fear, is that people are half dead from fear, but do not want to admit it. So they hide this as "love for nature". But this is not love, this is fear...

 

[Kyle M]

I have a manuscript coming out in Nutritional Neuroscience soon that is quite Peaty. It is essentially the 2nd chapter of my dissertation, where I feed female mice one of four diets: low-fat control, and three high-fat diets with either mostly coconut oil, mostly vegetable oil, and one in between. The mice were also ovariectomized (a lot of work to do that surgery to almost 200 mice) and either given daily estrogen or just the oil vehicle.

My conclusions aren't super strong, but there was an effect whereby the veggie oil groups had impaired glucose metabolism compared to the saturated fat groups. There was also a bit of interesting cytokine/inflammation stuff in some of the estrogen mice.

The best part, however, is that I was able to put a lot of text in the introduction and the discussion, about PUFA and CO2 and estrogen, that I was surprised got through. Nutritional Neuroscience isn't a hugely important journal, but I still would have thought they would have balked at my conclusion that estrogen treatment is not effective for metabolic syndrome in post-menopausal women, especially if given the health concerns (cancer). Furthermore that a reduced PUFA diet is probably a better strategy for preventing metabolic syndrome later in life for women. Maybe the science establishment has gotten so big it can't police all of the articles very effectively. I'll post it when it's available.

 

[Kyle M]

Latest manuscript is finally out: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1028415X.2017.1347374
Peep the discussion to see some seriously Peaty points I was able to sneak in.

 

[Kyle M]

They sent me another link supposedly to free downloads of the paper: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/qyRMBitYZzCpAa9UV7rE/full

 

[Kyle M]

http://www.nutricrinology.com/?p=244

 

[Kyle M]

SNR #197: Kyle Mamounis, PhD – Fatty Acid Metabolism & Implications for Health | Sigma Nutrition & Performance

 

[Kyle M]

SNR #197: Kyle Mamounis, PhD – Fatty Acid Metabolism & Implications for Health | Sigma Nutrition & Performance

*trying to inject Ray Peat ideas into a normie-ish nutrition/health podcast*