Why does Danny Roddy recommend sugar to reduce stress/estrogen? page 60

[otzi]

Choco, it doesn't take much to "prevent" this physiological insulin resistance if it even is a problem. You don't even technically need "daily" doses of carbs (and this would be mostly starch since the majority of sugar is delt with in the liver) to prevent it. A refeed once every week or two should be enough to keep your body in check and prevent this from happening.

If it isn't, then I think you have issues that go beyond the mere physiological that you should probably be addressing and simply adding "more carbs" likely isn't going to do much for you in that case. I'm not saying daily carbs are bad for you, just that it doesn't take very much to prevent the physiological insulin resistance.

I knew I should have been doing that, but it is hard! When I'd try, I'd bloat up and for an ex-obese person, any weight gain is met with horror. It's so easy to completely eliminate starch from your diet, it's usually the first thing to go behind sugar, flour and oil.

I'm on a new journey now to find a 'no-brainer' diet that includes an ample amount of starch, fat, meat, fruit and veggies every day. All I'm looking for now is to just maintain my current weight by eating good food, get my thyroid and glucose operating normally, and see where I'm at in a year with minimal tweaks.

Wasn't the downfall of the Atkin's Diet the fact that no one could add back in the carbs like Atkin's recommended?

[Drumroll]

Personally, I love my high fat diet. But I do end up getting a good refeed about every two weeks or so. Usually a meal with some white rice (sushi anyone?) or perhaps some sweet potatoes or what have you. I don't eat out very often, but when I do there is usually a refeed involved in that.

I usually say you can eat VLC most of the time if that's your preference and never develop physiological insulin resistance as long as you make sure to do this every once in a while to "remind" your body what to do with insulin.

[ChocoTaco369]

Dude! Awesome advice, glad I caught you in a writing mood. I have been scaling back the potatoes and hardly ever eat rice, maybe 1X week. I have been eating plantains, greenish bananas, and sweet potatoes more. I will try your idea of eating the starch mainly in evening. I have been eating 2-3 clementines and 1-2 bananas a day.

I usually IF til noon, exercise a little in the morning and heavy in the afternoons 3-4X/week. Since adding in the starch, I have nearly doubled my capacity for pullups from 60 to 100 in a 6 set window. Also seeing similar progress with weighted squats and pushups.

In one month of this, I have gained 5 pounds, but it seems to just be added muscle and maybe some extra intestinal matter. Would be nice to get glucose under control. Having insulin sensitivity issues can cause many other set-backs besides high FBG.

Try lumping your carbs strictly after workouts. If you don't lift heavy that day, simply eat low carbohydrate. Cut the starch, maybe limit yourself to a piece or two of fruit solely in the evening if you feel the need for something sweet.

And most of all, listen to yourself. I think you're eating carbs just for the sake of carbs. I'm 26 and lift heavy regularly, but even I don't really crave any starch unless it's after a workout. 80% of my meals are naturally low carb because I sit around all day at work. I find if I'm sedentary, I just want meat, dairy, vegetables and occasional fruit. You may find yourself truly not wanting all this starch if you really listen to yourself.

Of course, you and I are different and naturally have different cravings, but try and pay more attention to what your body wants. It's usually good at telling you when it wants fat or sugar. It's just a pain translating them. If you want ice cream, what does it mean? Fat, sugar or protein? It's a good source of all three. I still haven't figured that one out, but I did learn that craving pasta = potatoes!

[brookesam]

@Choco- Thanks for your reply!

I was so frustrated while VLC and being in ketosis. I could tell I had major insulin resistance esp. for eating around 20-50g(max) carbs a day and using the same if not more insulin than when eating up to 150g. My body was very stressed. I didn't understand that even when I lowered my protein why I had to give extra bolus insulin to take care of blood sugar spikes that seemed to come out of no where!

I seem to do best eating equal (give or take) percentages of fat/protein/carbs. Just my n=1

[Pkayley]

"A decrease in sugar utilization (or just not eating any) decreases carbon dioxide levels, which starves the mitochondria of oxygen. The mitochondria need to use oxygen vigorously during stress to produce hormones and energy."

Danny please explain/reference where you get this fundamental principle from? Especially the first half. Thanks

[Damiana]

You do realize this thread has been dead over a year and Danny Roddy isn't going to personally reply?

[dannyroddy]

"A decrease in sugar utilization (or just not eating any) decreases carbon dioxide levels, which starves the mitochondria of oxygen. The mitochondria need to use oxygen vigorously during stress to produce hormones and energy."

Danny please explain/reference where you get this fundamental principle from? Especially the first half. Thanks

Any physiology book will do.

Sugar and fat can both go through the krebs cycle, but if you're 'using fat as fuel' you will not get the extra step of pyruvate decarboxylation, which provides a significant amount of CO2.

"Burning fat also produces less CO2 than burning carbohydrate because fats are poor in oxygen compared to carbs." - Dr. Chris Masterjohn

"While dietary fat is clearly important, there may be a role for dietary carbohydrate as well. Once vitamins A and D stimulate the production of vitamin K-dependent proteins, vitamin K activates those proteins by adding carbon dioxide to them. Once added to a protein, carbon dioxide carries a negative charge and allows the protein to interact with calcium, which carries a positive charge. The greater the supply of carbon dioxide, the better vitamin K can do its job.25 Carbohydrates are rich in carbon and oxygen, and when we break them down for energy we release these elements in our breath as carbon dioxide. Because carbohydrates are richer in oxygen, burning them generates about 30 percent more carbon dioxide per calorie than burning fat, and low-carbohydrate diets have been shown to lower blood levels of carbon dioxide (Figure 3).26 Ideally, we should study this further by determining whether dietary carbohydrate affects the amount of activated vitamin K-dependent proteins in humans." - Dr. Chris Masterjohn

"It is clearly time to move beyond viewing each vitamin in isolation. The fat-soluble vitamins not only synergize with each other, but cooperate with many other nutrients and metabolic factors such as magnesium, zinc, fat, carbohydrate, carbon dioxide and thyroid hormone.

This paradigm has two important implications. At the level of scientific research, a study about one vitamin can easily come to false conclusions unless it takes into account its interactions with all the others. We should reverently and humbly bow before the complexity of these interactions, realizing how little we know and recognizing that we are always learning..." -Dr. Chris Masterjohn

Nutritional Adjuncts to the Fat-Soluble Vitamins - Weston A Price Foundation

[dannyroddy]

Some questions about starches vs. fructose:

1) Why does Ray repeatedly mention that starches are more 'harmful' and likely to lead to weight gain if fructose is stored as liver glycogen, then converted to glucose when it's used? I don't understand how or why eating fructose in the form of fruit or sucrose in the form of table sugar would have significant benefits over eating glucose in the form of starches.

Off the top of my head:

-Hepatic glycogen is a factor in satiety, fructose/glucose refills hepatic glycogen better than glucose alone.
-Starches increase bacterial endotoxin, fructose is absorbed rapidly from the upper end of the intestine, where yeast activity is minimal to none
-Fructose intensifies the oxidation of glucose and shifts the phosphorylation state of the cell favoring oxidative metabolism (i.e., glucose to carbon dioxide)
-Fructose restores diet-induced thermogenesis and carbon dioxide levels to near normal more than glucose alone does
-Fructose bypasses and activates key steps in glycolysis that are inhibited in people with poor glucose tolerance

2) In Lyle McDonald's UD2, he says that ultimately it doesn't matter what type of carbohydrate you use to to a carb load, but that fructose tends to give inferior results to starches/glucose because fructose is used preferentially by the liver and is not very effecient at being used to refill muscle glycogen. What's your take on this?

A Primer on Dietary Carbohydrates | BodyRecomposition - The Home of Lyle McDonald

I think the idea is that the harmful effects of glucose alone are neutralized when combined with fructose. Also, that fructose can restore or support efficient energy production if inhibited (i.e., glucose to carbon dioxide instead of glucose to lactic acid).

[dannyroddy]

For Danny, I am hoping he can explain what the takeaway points for someone like me would be given I already have hair like a fox, a sex drive like a rabbit, 5-10 vanity pounds not unlike a gorilla, a predisposition to gain weight with very high carbohydrates like a pig, and a lack of faith in the long-term ability of "will power" to maintain a calorie-restricted diet like...well, let's say...Oprah.

After two years of zero-carbing I was ready for a new paradigm. I wasn't where I wanted to be.

I initially noted many benefits when I started including starches in my diet. The main thing being an increase in body temperature and the disappearance of a lot of hypo/stress symptoms I had been having.

This lead me to take a close look at the metabolism/thyroid and attempt to put the pieces together in a meaningful way.

[BestBetter]

Thanks for that explanation, Danny!

Just a quick update: since July, I've been experimenting with adding more fructose and sucrose to my diet and lowering fat to compensate. I was initially really nervous about this, but I think it's done me a world of good. It didn't fix all my health issues, but it did bring a noticeable improvement.

The increase in carbs from both starches and sugars reduced my fatigue and increased my mood, though there was still plenty of room for improvement (which made me realize just how bad it had gotten while on low carb).

In the past few weeks I've added a glandular supplement (it includes raw glandular extracts of thyroid, adrenals, pituitary) and niacinamide. I'm still playing around with the dosage, but from the first day I got such a huge boost in energy and mood, I really felt invincible. Plus, it gave me a big increase in body temperature so that I'm almost a normal warm-blooded person again. I'm not sure if it's due to either the glandulars or the niacinamide or if it's from both working synergistically, but I feel like a million bucks...hard to believe such a huge improvement could come from such a basic, cheap supplement.