This certainly has taken off faster than expected. I hardly know where to start.
Structure , you are one of the most respected members on this board, and I value your council. The whole reason I began studying medicine in the first place was because of this athersclerosis thing I have. The TRT is really just for fun in comparison. As you said I`m a smart guy and not likely to get taked in by the latest popular fad. (or words to that effect). I believed the whole cholesterol theory of ersclerosis untill recently. Then a year ago I caught Robert Lustig`s lecture on monosaccaride (simple sugars) metabolism on UCTV . About 2/3 of the way thru he blackboards the entire series of biochemical reactions that convert part of the monosaccaride bolus to VLDL. I filed the info away in the Damn glad we dont eat much sugar and gotta root out the high fructose corn syrup from the diet doto file. So, there is not a shade of doubt in my mind that simple sugars raise VLDL. Neither is there a shade of doubt that VLDL is one of the principle culprits in athersclerosis, another being inflammation.
Then the Atkins diet came to my attention. Now the entire picture is falling into place:
the lipoprotein continum
insulin-glucogon balance
triglyceride, fat, carb, protein metabolism
inflammation
omega 3,6 and 9 fatty acid ratios
eicosinoid chemistry
It goes on and on. I really believe there is truth in here. I`m trying to relate all the info that LW64, Citvitorg and what I find on the net with what I already know and it is matching up and making sense. As a critical thinker please find the time to give the theory your unbiased consideration.
At least give Lustigs lecture a go and let me know what you think.
YouTube - Sugar: The Bitter Truth
What you're saying makes a lot of sense, and I do think this is good science. Like the rest of you, I find it pretty upsetting when some group or organization takes this good science and tries to manipulate people with it. Specifically, I feel I was manipulated by the Atkins folks because they mixed good science with a little bit of pseudoscience to further their bottom line. I still think that the foundation of the Atkins diet is good science, but it is important to be careful to separate the science part of it from the marketing part of it. That was the intention behind my previous post --- after looking at that particular website, it seemed to me that this particular individual was likely more of a salesman than a scientist. I posted the formula for a "fad diagnosis" to illustrate this --- that real problems and real science can be perverted if you prey on people's desperation. Take for example vitamin D. On this forum, we're all believers in Vitamin D's benefits. We've all read the science behind it. But there are people who will try to pervert the enthusiasm behind vitamin D to make a business for themselves. In a case like this, the foundation is strong, and the basic science is good, but that doesn't mean that an unethical, business-minded person can't find a way to exploit these ideas to make you think that you need their products and services in order to make yourself "well."
This was the case for me with adrenal fatigue. The essential ideas behind adrenal fatigue are scientifically sound: you can encounter HPA problems from chronic stress. However, with a little bit of smoke and mirrors, you can convince just about anyone that they are suffering from adrenal fatigue. The symptoms are vague and nonspecific. They find a way to make you think that the tests ordinarily offered by the medical establishment are inadequate to find a true diagnosis. They convince you that you are sick, and then they try to sell you their products.
Here's a concrete example: I went to see a doctor (a legitmate MD) that was dabbling in naturopathy and other holistic practices. I was diagnosed based on a "muscle test": someone put their finger on various parts of my body (say for example, over the kidney) and asked me to raise my arm out to the side. A problem would be diagnosed depending on whether or not they could push my arm down while touching the part of my body: if they could push my arm down when a finger was placed over my kidney, then I had kidney trouble. If it stayed up, then my kidney was healthy. Given that the pressure was applied to my arm near the wrist, where mechanical advantage dictates that they could push my arm down at will, it was honestly up to the muscle tester to decide when he was going to push my arm down, so he could diagnose me with any number of ailments as he saw fit. This was only a few years ago; this "muscle testing" is still actively practiced, and has many fervent believers (google it and see what you find). Once I was diagnosed with several problems based on this muscle testing, I was offered the opportunity to make myself well by purchasing their clinic's expensive supplements. The supplements were primarily composed of extracts of dessicated animal organs (usually corresponding to the organ that was supposedly not working properly). The office visit was a little over $400.
While this is an extreme example, it actually happened to me (no, I didn't buy the supplements, although I couldn't get my $400 back). When people are desperate to fix themselves, they are able to be exploited. When there's money to be made, there will always be unethical people around to distort truths to make this money. The website that I used in my previous post looked like an example of this, but to be honest, I didn't bother evaluating his ideas; I just looked at the format of the website and knew what was waiting for me at the bottom of the page: "CLICK HERE TO ORDER."
With all that being said, I hope that my skepticism isn't taken as a wholesale dismissal of low-carb diets or adrenal fatigue; there is good science behind both. Rather my comments are meant to draw attention to the outrageous number of people making an equally outrageous number of clams related to both low-carb diets and adrenal fatigue, all in an elaborate attempt to separate you from your money. Concretely, my criticisms of these ideas can be nicely summed up as follows:
- Low carb dieting is great for health, so long as it not done to an extreme that results in elevated cortisol levels.
- The Atkins diet doesn't mix too well with moderate levels of exercise: you can end up with some problems if you try to do decent amounts of hard exercise (1 hour a day) with significant carbohydrate deprivation. Some people will fight me tooth and nail on this issue... It is, in my opinion, the biggest limitation of the Atkins diet. However, a lot of people don't really exercise that much, so its not really an issue for them, and they can thus safely reap the health benefits of long-term carbohydrate restriction.
- Adrenal hypofunction should only be diagnosed when blood tests show an imbalance of HPA hormones, much in the same way that gonadal hypofunction is diagnosed (i.e. when HPT hormones are abnormal).
- There is, unfortunately, a large number of snake-oil salesman that have tried to manipulate a public that is eager to to make itself healthy by distorting aspects of low-carb dieting and HPA dynamics. You have to be careful.
Hope that clarifies my position...
