THE BEST Of TIMES, THE WORST Of TIMES

[tara]

I would guess that one effect of going very low fat would be from tipping the Randle 'cycle' (seesaw). In the presence of free-fatty acids, cells burn less sugar. Take the fat away and they can burn more sugar. Burning sugar produces more CO2 per energy than burning fat. The higher CO2 level improves O2 delivery and lots of other things, supporting a continued higher metabolism, as long as there is enough sugar available. If much fat is eaten, or if the sugar supply gets low enough that stress hormones come into play to maintain the glucose supply and release fat from tissues, it starts to tip the seesaw back the other way, especially if the liberated fats are PUFAs.

 

[thebigpeatowski]

SEE? Now there's a smart person who can explain how stuff works. I would NEVER be able to explain it, not ever. I have terrible memory retention.

All I remember reading was Peat saying lower the fat intake and increase sugar to reduce stress so that's what I did....along with lotsa B's, caffeine and vit.E and Progesterone. Seemed to me that my body would have to learn to burn sugar eventually, certainly got MUCH WORSE, before it got better tho. Thanks for the explanation tara, unfortunately I will probably forget it too soon. WHAT CAN WE DO FOR MEMORY???

 

[tara]

I would guess that one effect of going very low fat would be from tipping the Randle 'cycle' (seesaw). In the presence of free-fatty acids, cells burn less sugar. Take the fat away and they can burn more sugar. Burning sugar produces more CO2 per energy than burning fat. The higher CO2 level improves O2 delivery and lots of other things, supporting a continued higher metabolism, as long as there is enough sugar available. If much fat is eaten, or if the sugar supply gets low enough that stress hormones come into play to maintain the glucose supply and release fat from tissues, it starts to tip the seesaw back the other way, especially if the liberated fats are PUFAs.

If I've got the theory right, while the brain and active muscles and some tissues like running on glucose, resting muscles and maybe some other tissues like burning fat. So as long you are eating lots of sugar and not much fat, while you sleep the muscles will slowly burn through the stored fat.

Wish my brain would retain other stuff - my memory could do with a boost too.

You're story is inspiring. I'm thinking I might benefit from reducing fat consumption in favour of more carbs, but with logistics and habit I haven't quite got there. I'm not wanting to get super restrictive at this stage, mostly just eating less of the white chocolate that I eat a bit more than I want because it's convenient and there. Lately I've been munching on crystalised ginger - also fairly convenient and delicious.

 

[thebigpeatowski]

I eat lots of crystalised ginger too, from Trader Joe's...love the stuff. Apparently it helps with digestion too, or so I'm told. The dehydrated organic mangoes are THE BEST!!! I ate 145 gms of them yesterday, that's like 107 gms of carbohydrate, so easy, so tasty and soooo convenient!

 

[tara]

WHAT CAN WE DO FOR MEMORY???

I think I remember that high cortisol levels interfere with the functioning of the hippocampus. The hippocampus is part of the brain that has a key role in laying down memories. So with a bit of luck, along with generally improving the energy supply to the brain, and reducing the destructive effect of PUFAs in the brain, keeping the cortisol levels down with lots of sugar (and Bs etc) will also help memory.

 

[thebigpeatowski]

I took some more future progress pics today and it occurred to me that my "5 MONTHS IN" and "LAST WEEK" pics were not really a fair comparison. The latter was taken at a distance with makeup on...so while I was snapping pics of my loose arm skin I tried to approximate a closer comparison of my skin with NO make up on. You can see that I have scarring and post inflammatory hyper-pigmentation, my face broke out while I was in Mexico chowing down on PUFA-laden resort food, can't be helped. I am hoping that with more time this too might heal, only time will tell. I can't bring myself to share the "BEFORE" body shots, they are simply too brutal and will surely put you off your food, but perhaps after some exercise/toning (if I ever get around to ACTUALLY exercising) I will share them on one of those ripped threads.

My waist fat is nearly gone, lotta loose skin tho...and stretch marks.

The last image is the scar left from my Red Light Burn back in March (see previous pics). If it does not heal I will be forced to have a tattoo of Ray Peat's Brain installed over it...I'm joking!!! I am terrified by needles, so NO ink on this girl.

 

[thebigpeatowski]

WHOA NELLIE!!! What did I do different? How come these pics showed up in the thread instead? I am so technologically challenged....okay, that is all for now. Nothing to see here folks.

 

[Blossom]

What a fabulous photo documentary BP! I love your willingness to share. Outward changes do reflect inner healing after all. I often regret not photographing my pigment issue at its worst because that change alone has been truly dramatic. You are beautiful already so it will be interesting to see how things unfold for you. Even though it's not about appearance our state of health does seem to be reflected in our outward appearance. I'm sure many will benefit from your sharing!

 

[Blossom]

BTW- I love the eyebrows!

 

[Jennifer]

I went through multiple rounds of Diflucan with my doctor, that particular drug is VERY hard on the liver, prolly not the smartest thing I've done. I haven't found my doctors to be helpful in this area at all. And I HATE to give non-Peatish advice, but I know how you feel so try the effin garlic....and give it your all...and report back!!!

Yeah, my doctor prescribed me Diflucan to be taken only two days a week because she doesn't want to hurt my liver. She also prescribed me Nystatin and she said that one doesn't get absorbed so it's safer. I haven't touched them because I figured, if anything, I would do the raw garlic. I really don't want to be taking the anti-fungal drugs if I don't have to.

So I'll give the garlic a shot and make sure to see it through to the end. I have to go through your thread again to see what all your symptoms were to give me an idea of what to expect. My only concern is watching out for intestinal burning because I've had a lot of issues with that in the past and I don't want to make things worse, but I have to do something.

Thanks for your help, tbigp. I'll report back, hopefully with good news! :)

 

[Blossom]

I went through multiple rounds of Diflucan with my doctor, that particular drug is VERY hard on the liver, prolly not the smartest thing I've done. I haven't found my doctors to be helpful in this area at all. And I HATE to give non-Peatish advice, but I know how you feel so try the effin garlic....and give it your all...and report back!!!

Yeah, my doctor prescribed me Diflucan to be taken only two days a week because she doesn't want to hurt my liver. She also prescribed me Nystatin and she said that one doesn't get absorbed so it's safer. I haven't touched them because I figured, if anything, I would do the raw garlic. I really don't want to be taking the anti-fungal drugs if I don't have to.

So I'll give the garlic a shot and make sure to see it through to the end. I have to go through your thread again to see what all your symptoms were to give me an idea of what to expect. My only concern is watching out for intestinal burning because I've had a lot of issues with that in the past and I don't want to make things worse, but I have to do something.

Thanks for your help, tbigp. I'll report back, hopefully with good news! :)

I'm sorry Jennifer if you have mentioned it already but I was wondering if you have tried flowers of sulfur? (Not that I'm dismissing garlic, I would definitely do that myself before diflucan or nystatin again!)

 

[Jennifer]

Thanks for mentioning the flowers of sulphur, Blossom. I tried it a while ago and it didn't do anything. I took it 3 days in a row totaling 1 tsp. worth. I read where you said it worked for you so I debated taking it again, but I wasn't sure how safe it was to take multiple times in one year.

I did however do our little experiment we wanted to test out, except instead of putting the sulphur in a foot bath, I made a paste out of it and put it on my face in case there was a fungal infection in my skin that was causing the facial rash. Even after my shower, I kept getting a whiff of sulphur and I secretly liked it.

Anyhow, after doing the sulphur experiment, I came across this quote by Ray:

"Flowers of sulfur, USP (or precipitated sulfur powder) can be mixed with a little water and applied topically to eliminate yeast...since the yeast live in water, they can interact immediately with the sulfur when it's in water."

Unfortunately, all the sulphur paste did was dry my face out and make me smell like an egg salad sandwich.

 

[charlie]

....I kept getting a whiff of sulphur and I secretly liked it.

:1

 

[Blossom]

I'm not sure if it makes a difference but I did the whole teaspoon of flowers of sulfur all in one dose. That's a great quote BTW. I would be interested in knowing too if it's o.k. to use flowers of sulfur more often if the fungal issue doesn't go away with the customary dose. I ended up needing to use it again after 1 year. Looks like I'm still healing but that fine by me. Sorry to get off topic. Garlic does seem like it would be safer than the pharma antifungals.

 

[thebigpeatowski]

Not off topic at all, I love hearing all this. I wanted to try the flowers of sulfur too, but it seemed difficult to find at the time and I was in a hurry to feel better. Looking back, EVERYTHING was difficult at that time. I'm positive my brain was flooded with serotonin, I had a hard time thinking clearly and felt absolutely helpless...those were some really dark days.

I think garlic has sulfur too, maybe that's part of the reason why it works. If you decide to do the garlic protocol you will most certainly get more than a whiff of sulfur...lol.

 

[SQu]

I dont know if flowers of sulphur work but certainly it's effortless and not unpleasant to take, unlike some others like garlic, antibiotics. Wish I knew. I'd repeat the dose but am concerned as RP says once a year IIRC.

Bigpeat to summarize would you say what worked for you was:
1. Fix digestion - however works for you
2. Fix glucose metabolism - fructose helps
3. cut fat?

I made some progress with the above but when I dropped the coconut oil to drop fat as low as possible I didnt feel great. Progress halted, stress hormone backlash, newly improved sleep went backwards. Maybe pufa release though mine shouldn't have been too bad. Fixing this now. But thank you for your story because it highlighted digestion and I'm realizing mine, though not dramatic, is also not ideal - but I might never have known.

 

[thebigpeatowski]

Yes, I had to fix my digestion first and foremost, but finding the gut cure overlapped with my sugar bender.
Using Cron-O to make sure all the nutrition was covered too. I kind of have a love/hate feeling for Cron-O because on one hand it seems so obsessive, but on the other hand I was literally retraining myself how to properly nourish my body, so I found it very useful.

It was readily apparent that I was NOT using the sugar that I was eating. As you all know I gained a ton of weight, my skin broke out terribly from severe insulin resistance and fasting blood glucose was in the 130's. That's when I did the pure fructose and mostly mangoes and OJ and completely cut all fat.

I found that even though I had enjoyed coconut oil, by the bucket load, for years during my high fat/low-carb days, my liver or maybe gall-bladder did not like it when I would eat any fat. I would feel sick, energy would drop, estrogen symptoms would return, etc. so I kept the fat out as much as possible and ate tons of sugar. I should add that I am eating fat again with no problem now and have been for a month. I have NO idea why I can tolerate it now, my guess is that my liver did some healing? I no longer have the liver pain....er whatever it was that hurt under my lower right rib cage.

I should also mention that I took my temp and pulse frequently, yes more obsession I know, but it was useful to keep track of it because if I began to get cold then I would use T3, sugar, b vits, caffeine, and aspirin to boost my metabolism.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure if I could have paid as much attention to all the details if I was working full time. I took a year off from work to find/focus on healing. While the first 6 months certainly looked as if I was headed in the WRONG direction, the last half has been amazing.

I CANNOT FIND THE WORDS TO DESCRIBE MY ELATION AT BEING ABLE TO BURN GLUCOSE AGAIN. When I was low-carb/zero carb, if I even so much as looked at a piece of fruit, my blood sugar would rise. I was terrified as I had watched my step-father become diabetic,I know exactly what he struggles with and was afraid that would be my fate as well....I'm just so happy that fear has been laid to rest. I can't talk about these things with my family or even my friends really, peeps just aren't interested....so unfortunately you guys get the brunt of my repetition!

 

[Peata]

I'm really glad to hear how well you're doing, BP. Your great health shines through your post.

It also helps me know I'm on the right track with what I've been doing, and is encouraging me to cut fat a little more than I already have.

KUTGW.

 

[SQu]

I too am amazed that so few people are interested when it could solve so many of their problems. Not having the energy is one reason. And just not seeing what it can do is another. As someone mentioned, if you think health = boring tasteless food, dry grilled chicken breast and salad without dressing then who'd be interested?

 

[pboy]

yea...unless you think your body is trying to self sabotage you, you should trust your senses

a huge problem that people in society don't...that's why I think many are damaged in some way...like, every other creature trusts its senses and impulses 100%, that's their inherent guide to life. Then you have a good amount of humans who don't...at all, which is like some kind of imbalance in the body/mind.
If you want to go deep, you will find out a lot more...all of your senses tell about somethings goodness or poison factor to your soul, translated out. Eyes, ears, nose,
skin, tongue...all of it. Try this experiment...look around at everything made with or covered in petroleum products...like anything painted, asphalted, ect...typical city stuff, look at things made of heavy metals like iron and steel..., then look at a pure panoramic of nature, and wood, and rocks and brick...your eyes don't lie. If your sensitive enough, youll notice that 'eye sores' are indications of the essence of the thing, and to any senses it will be disturbing. Petro powered industry sounds harsh, smells bad, looks bad, and is poison in any way you intake it
but a more direct and obvious thing is how things taste and palate...and how they affect your health, and how preferred cravings will change at times

off topic but my voice box runs loose