Ketogenic and GAPS Diets that manage the cause of disease, inflammation. Exercise that increase muscle with 15 mins. resistance training per week.
Before we dive into the top 10, I would like to review the focus of this Blog.
I believe the best way to predict my future is to create it. To do that, I make it a habit to improve my health.
Continue reading “Happy New Year! Here are the Top 10 Posts for 2022.”
The Top 10 Posts of 2021 are ranked by the number of times you viewed a Post.
Before we dive into the top 10, I would like to review the focus of this Blog.
I believe the best way to predict my future is to create it. To do that, I make it a habit to improve my health.
My goal is to maximize my physical performance and mental clarity, body composition, and most importantly my overall health with a wholesome diet and exercise.
Why am I so concerned, you may ask. My motivation came from watching my mother suffer from numerous illnesses. Her life was regulated by when she had to take her drugs.
I have been retired for a while and I have yet to experience any of her illnesses. I attribute that to eating a wholesome diet and exercise.
I supplement my diet with high-quality natural vitamins, mineral and supplements.
In my posts, I focus on two diets: the Ketogenic (Low-Carb) and GAPS (Gut and Psychology / Physiology Syndrome) diets.
My exercise of choice is Dr. Doug McGuff’s Super Slow High-Intensity Exercise Program that I do for 15 minutes, once a week. If you would like a PDF of the book please email me for copy.
To see the Post, Please copy and paste the link in your address bar.
Now for the Top Ten:
Continue reading “Happy New Year! Here are the Top 10 Posts for 2021”There’s an answer to the current terrible health trends of skyrocketing obesity, diabetes and chronic disease rates.It all starts with the nutritional composition of your diet. Most people simply eat far too many processed foods, grains and sugars, (particularly fructose), net carbs and too few healthy fats, and too many unhealthy fats, which results in gaining and retaining extra body fat and becoming increasingly insulin resistant.
Most also eat too much protein for optimal health and, while exercise cannot compensate for the damage done by a high-carb, low-fat diet, most do not get enough physical movement either. These factors set in motion metabolic and biological cascades that deteriorate your health.
The Root Cause of Most Degenerative Conditions:A foundational cause of most degenerative diseases is the fact that your mitochondria, the little powerhouses located in most of your body’s cells, are not receiving sufficient amounts of proper fuel. As a result, your mitochondria start to deteriorate and malfunction. This dysfunction lays the groundwork for subsequent breakdowns of various bodily systems.
Your mitochondria generate the vast majority of the energy (adenosine triphosphate or ATP) in your body. Were all mitochondria to fail, you’d be dead in seconds.
In addition to generating the energy currency of your body, ATP, your mitochondria are also responsible for apoptosis (programmed cell death), and serve as important signalling molecules that help regulate the expression of your genes. This is a function that even most doctors are unaware of.
Your mitochondria are nourished by certain nutrients and harmed by others.
So, a healthy diet is a diet that supports mitochondrial function and prevents dysfunction, and having the metabolic flexibility to burn fat is the key.
People who eat a primarily processed food diet are burning carbohydrates as their primary fuel, which has the devastating effect of shutting down your body’s ability to burn fat. This is why obesity is so prevalent, and why so many find it nearly impossible to lose weight and keep it off.
Fats Versus Carbs:Ideally you will have the metabolic flexibility to burn either carbs or fats for fuel. Saturated fats have been wrongly demonized as being harmful, and when food manufacturers started removing the fats from their processed foods, they added sugar instead. We now know healthy dietary fats support good health.
When your body burns primarily carbs for fuel, excessive reactive oxygen species (ROS) and secondary free radicals are created, which damage cellular mitochondrial membranes and DNA, leading to the degenerative diseases that are so prevalent today. Healthy dietary fats, which are a cleaner-burning fuel, create far fewer ROS and free radicals. Fats are also critical for the health of cellular membranes and many other biological functions.
Metabolic Mitochondrial Therapy – Fat and Carb Basics:Dr. Mercola developed the metabolic mitochondrial therapy (MMT). The initial phase of the MMT program – which ends once your body is able to effectively burn fat for fuel – can take anywhere from weeks to months or longer, depending on how metabolically damaged you are.
The initial strategy of this program is the restriction of net carbohydrates (total carbs minus fiber) to 20 to 50 grams per day, but only until you start burning fat for fuel. To replace the lost carbs, you increase healthy fats, so that you’re getting anywhere from 50 to 85 percent of your daily calories from fat.
Examples of high-quality healthy fats include:• Avocados• Coconuts and coconut oil (excellent for cooking as it can withstand higher temperatures without oxidizing)• Animal-based omega-3 fat from fatty fish low in mercury like wild-caught Alaskan salmon, sardines, anchovies and/or krill oil• Butter made from raw grass fed organic milk• Raw nuts (macadamia and pecans are ideal as they’re high in healthy fat while being low in protein)• Seeds like black sesame, cumin, pumpkin and hemp seeds• Olives and olive oil (make sure it’s third party certified, as 80 percent of olive oils are adulterated with vegetable oils)• Grass fed (pastured) preferably organic and humanely raised meats. Avoid CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation) animal products• MCT oil• Ghee (clarified butter), lard and tallow (excellent for cooking)• Raw cacao butter• Organic, pastured egg yolks
Fats to avoid include trans fats and highly refined polyunsaturated vegetable oils. Both damage the mitochondria.Raising the amount of fat and decreasing net carbs is what pushes your body into burning fat for fuel. Eating high amounts of both fat and net carbs will NOT allow your body to make this shift, as your body will use whatever sugar is available first.
Metabolic Mitochondrial Therapy — Protein Basics:A general recommendation is to limit your protein to one-half gram of protein per pound (1 gram per kilo) of lean body mass. To determine your lean body mass, subtract your body fat percentage from 100.
For example, if you have 30 percent body fat, then you have 70 percent lean body mass. Then multiply that percentage (in this case, 0.7) by your current weight to get your lean body mass in pounds or kilos. As an example, if you weigh 170 pounds, 0.7 multiplied by 170 equals 119 pounds of lean body mass. Using the “half-gram of protein” rule, you daily protein requirement would be 59.5 or just under 60 grams.
To figure out your body fat refer to this Blog Post Loosing Weight? Here Are A Few Ways To Measure Your Progress https://2healthyhabits.wordpress.com/2021/02/19/loosing-weight-here-are-a-few-ways-to-measure-your-progress/Here is an example:Formula: Women: 76 – (20 x height in inches/waist circumference in inches) = RFMTo calculate, first (20 x 64in tall) = 1280, then divide that by her waist, we will use 27 inches = 1280/27 =47.4, subtract 76 = 28.59. This is this woman’s body fat. For men, subtract 64 instead of 76.
Certain individuals and life circumstances do raise your protein requirements. This includes seniors, pregnant women and those who are aggressively exercising (or competing). As a general rule, these individuals need about 25 percent more protein.
Why Limit Protein?The reason for limiting protein is because excessive protein has a stimulating effect on a very important biochemical signalling pathway called the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), which has significant, adverse metabolic consequences. Importantly, this pathway plays a significant role in many cancers. It’s also a significant regulator of the aging process. When you reduce protein to just what your body needs, mTOR remains inhibited, which helps minimize your chances of cancer growth.
Excessive protein can also be converted into body fat and, through some pathways, sugar. So, net carb restriction normalizes the insulin pathway while protein restriction normalizes the mTOR pathway, both of which are important for optimal health. It’s well worth noting that cancer is just one expression of the same metabolic problem found in most other degenerative diseases. The same pathways are involved in most if not all of them.
Feast-Famine Cycling Basics:A crucial difference between MMT and most other ketogenic diets is something called feast-famine cycling. Continuously remaining in nutritional ketosis can actually cause counterproductive side effects, and is likely not optimally healthy in the long term. The ketogenic cycling is implemented once you’re out of the initial stage and your body has regained the ability to burn fat. At that point, you begin cycling in and out of nutritional ketosis by upping your carb and protein intake once or twice a week.
After a day or two of “feasting,” you then cycle back into nutritional ketosis (the “fasting” stage) for the remainder of the week. By periodically pulsing higher carb intakes, consuming, say, 100 or 150 grams of carbs opposed to 20 to 50 grams per day, your ketone levels will dramatically increase and your blood sugar will drop.
Why is this pulsing so important? It goes back to the workings of insulin. The primary function of insulin is not merely to drive sugar into the cell but rather to suppress the production of glucose by your liver (hepatic gluconeogenesis). When you suppress insulin for too long, however, your liver starts making more glucose to make up for the deficit.
The result? Your blood sugar starts rising even if you’re not eating any sugar at all. In this situation, eating a high-carb meal will actually LOWER your blood sugar (because you activated insulin, which then suppresses glucose production in your liver). In the long term, this is not a healthy metabolic state, and cycling in and out of nutritional ketosis will prevent this from occurring.It is simply wrong to try and calculate composition of your meals, or calculate when you should eat and how much. These things need to be done instinctively, from the signals your body’s biology gives you, as your body has infinitely more wisdom about what it needs, than our mind and intelligence will ever calculate.
Getting Started:To be successful on this program, precision is important. You cannot guess when it comes to the amount of fat, net carbs and protein you eat. In the beginning, you have to measure and track them. To do this you need:• A kitchen scale to weigh food items• Measuring cups to measure food amounts• A nutrient tracker such as http://www.cronometer.com/mercolaBased on the personal base parameters you enter, such as height, weight, body fat percentage and waist circumference, it will automatically calculate the ideal ratios of net carbs, protein and healthy fats (including your omega-3 to omega-6 ratio) to put you into nutritional ketosis.
An alternative free carb tracker is Carb Manager. To learn more please visit this Post https://2healthyhabits.wordpress.com/2020/09/11/carb-manager-is-the-most-comprehensive-and-easiest-to-use-net-and-total-carb-counter-2/
From a metabolic perspective, once you become an efficient fat burner, one of the most astonishing things that happens is that your food cravings disappear. No longer will sugar rule your world. It’s incredibly freeing for most people. Your energy level and mental clarity will also dramatically increase.
Source: Basic Introduction to Metabolic Mitochondrial Therapy
I invite you to Follow my Blog, Facebook or be added to my email distribution list. My focus is to maximize my physical performance and mental clarity, body composition, and most importantly overall health with a wholesome diet and exercise.
I will bring you compelling articles on Ketogenic and GAPS diets, the Super Slow High-Intensity Exercise Program and supplements.To follow my Blog, please click the Follow button to receive an email when the next posting is available. Hint: You may have to click the Accept and Close button before follow is available. I thrive on feedback. Please let me know you are interested in the content by clicking Like, Commenting or sending me a message or email about the Post.
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May you Live Long Healthy.
Yours truly,
Lydia Polstra Email: lpolstra@bell.net Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/2healthyhabits/Blog: https://2healthyhabits.wordpress.com
Disclaimer: The content of this email or Post is not intended for the treatment or prevention of disease, nor as a substitute for medical treatment, nor as an alternative to medical advice. Use of recommendations is at the choice and risk of the reader.
Your genes are your blueprints or your code for building proteins. These proteins are involved in all of the biochemistry in your body – from making hormones and neurotransmitters to releasing stored glucose for fuel.
You have millions upon millions of these proteins, but they have to be instructed on what to do.
When someone does fasting, many interesting things happen to your genetics. Fasting is one very important part of your Epigenetics.
Continue reading “How Fasting Influences Our Genetics.”My grandfather ate bread sugar, drank alcohol and smoked his entire life and he lived to be over 90 years old. I thought that if we consume these foods we’re supposed to die early. How do you explain that?
Dr. Berg explains, we are all born with different genes. Some people have highly robust genes that can withstand much more than others.
Other people develop metabolic issues early in life and are not able to consume unhealthy foods without them having a tremendously negative effect on their health.
It is possible to eat unhealthily and live a long life. However, very few people are able to do this without experiencing serious health consequences.
Continue reading “Why Do Some People Have A Bad Diet and Still Live a Long Life?”
I was born with bad genes. There is nothing I can do. That is absolutely not true!
Only 5-10% of disease is caused by a genetic defect that has been passed on by your parents. It does not mean that you’re going to get that disease.
Thomas Seyfried, the expert in cancer, wrote a book, Cancer As A Metabolic Disease. He says when you see tumors in cancers you do see a lot of genetic mutations but those mutations, those alterations in genes are downstream.
They are symptoms NOT causes of the cancer.
They are symptoms of the damage in the mitochondria, the machinery where you are burning fuel. That is the first thing that gets damaged and then the mitochondria adapts to a different metabolism called fermentation.
Because the mitochondria has its own DNA and they are not protected like the DNA in the nucleus because they are outside the nucleus they are very susceptible to mutations and alterations in the DNA. That is probably one of the reasons why you see so many gene mutations in tumors and cancer.
Most gene mutations are not inherited; they are somatic mutations. Somatic mutations mean it is not inherited, but caused by your environment.
To understand this further, epigenetics is an important term. It means above genetics.
Epigenetics explained:
Continue reading “How Much Of Your Health Or Disease Is Genetic?”Do you have an excessive waist circumference, high triglycerides, low HDL, fatty plaques in your arteries, hypertension etc.?
In Part One we covered points 1 to 3.
Topics Addressed:
In Part Two, we will discuss Nutritional Ketosis as a potent therapy to restore metabolic health.
Since 2012 we’ve learned about ketones in particular beta-hydroxybutyrate, which is the primary circulating ketone, as an epigenetic modulator of gene expression and a signalling agent. Eric Virgin’s science paper showed an increase in a whole array of antioxidant genes, as well as at the tissue level, protection from oxidative stress resulting from being in ketosis, in the range of nutritional ketosis.
Beta-hydroxybutyrate, which is produced by your liver while being in the state of ketosis, is an alternative source of fuel for the brain.
Ketogenic diets are anti-inflammatory.
There a couple papers showing on the ability of the Ketogenic diet to extend longevity.
There are hundreds of studies on low-carbohydrate ketogenic diets and obesity. They all show low carb diets do much better than low-fat diets.
One of the real problems is diabetes. Very well controlled one- year inpatient studies used the ketogenic diet to reverse type-2 diabetes in over half the patients in 3 months. Ninety percent of the people in the study prefer follow the Ketogenic diet long term.
Saturated Fat: Historically it has been villainized as being the cause of a lot of chronic disease. The most recent meta-analysis of dietary saturated fat and risk for heart disease shownoassociation. In fact you decrease saturated fat and replace it with carbs you actually increase your relative risk of having a coronary event.
If you look at studies that have actually measured saturated fatty acids levels in the body, whether that be in membranes or in the blood, and risk of heart disease, there is a very consistent association with higher risk for heart disease. So if you have more palmitic acid or total saturated fatty acids in your blood so you’re accumulating saturated fat that does increase your risk for heart disease and type-2 diabetes.
What contributes to accumulation of saturated fat in the body? It’s not dietary saturated fat. Carbs control lipid metabolism primarily through insulin. Carbohydrates in the diet have a big impact on how we process fat. We measured saturated fat levels. We always show saturated fat levels go down more on the ketogenic diet. So eat more saturated fat but actually have less in your body.
It seems counterintuitive but if you are eating Ketogenic diet you switch over to burning almost exclusively fat and ketones for fuel and that includes saturated fat.
If you’re eating saturated fat you have a nice marbled steak and getting a nice dose of saturated fat but if you typically eat that with potato or rice and a roll and dessert, you get the insulin response and you’re going to be more prone to store that saturated fat in your in your body.
See the image of Diary Matrix – You are what you save from what you eat.
On the other hand if you have some non-starchy vegetables, hold the potato and maybe even add some steak butter to the steak suddenly you’re in a different metabolic state. Insulin muted dramatically and you’re continuing to burn fat. It’s very hard to imagine saturated fat having any harmful effects in the body if it’s promptly being converted to co2 and water, which is essentially happening on a ketogenic diet.
The point is: the processing of saturated fat in the body is highly dependent on the carbs that are consumed with it.
Really carbohydrates control lipid metabolism at that level. At the level of the individual, it is the level of carb tolerance a person has. If you’re more carb intolerant you’re going to be more prone to that storing that fat and then a person who’s more carb tolerant.
For athletes, we are challenging that carbs they need carbs. Now a lot of athletes within the ultra endurance community are adopting this and surpassing their own records. While being on the Ketogenic diet, ninety percent of their fuel came from fat.
In the last Tour de France it became known that the first and second place finishers were low carb athletes.
For more information on athlete improving their performance please watch the video link below.
See the image of the Potential Benefits of the Keto-Adapted State
Keto adaptation changes the body in profound ways. There are a lot of changes going on metabolically and physically and physiologically within humans as they adapt to a ketogenic diet.
The main point is we are eating too many carbs. Get the carbs down to a level below which people can tolerate them and maintain health. Ketogenic diets have some unique benefits and a lot of this may be attributed to ketones.
Everybody’s carb tolerance is different. You’ve got to find that level of carb intolerance works. It might be a carb level below which you’re in ketosis but not everybody needs to be in ketosis. It might be a carb level below, which you keep all the signs and symptoms of metabolic syndrome at bay.
Personalized nutrition really needs to focus on is getting the carbs right.
Summary:
Consumption of carbs at levels that exceed a person’s ability to directly oxidize is the driving force behind the obesity/diabetes epidemics.
Ketogenic diets are uniquely potent at restoring metabolic health
What is optimal carb level?
A level below which:
See the Image of the Summary.
This Post has been condensed from the original: Ketones: From Toxic to Therapeutic to Ergogenic with Jeff S. Volek, PhD, RD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRoifq_lWZA
Disclaimer: The content of this email or Post is not intended for the treatment or prevention of disease, nor as a substitute for medical treatment, nor as an alternative to medical advice. Use of recommendations is at the choice and risk of the reader.
I invite you to Follow my Blog, Facebook or be added to my email distribution list. My focus is to maximize my physical performance and mental clarity, body composition, and most importantly overall health with a wholesome diet and exercise.
I will bring you compelling articles on Ketogenic and GAPS diets, the Super Slow High-Intensity Exercise Program and supplements.
To follow my Blog, please click the Follow button to receive an email when the next posting is available. Hint: You may have to click the Accept and Close button before follow is available.
I thrive on feedback. Please let me know that you like the Post by clicking Like, or Commenting on the content.
If you wish to contact me by Email, please email lpolstra@bell.net using this form.
May you Live Long Healthy.
Yours truly,
Lydia Polstra
In almost every human study of overweight patients lasting 3 months or longer comparing a ketogenic diet to a low fat diet, the weight loss with the low carb diet is somewhat or significantly greater (Sachner-Bernstein 2015). Most of the weight lost on a well-formulated ketogenic diet lasting a few weeks or longer comes from body fat.
The Relationship Between Nutritional Ketosis and Weight Loss
Yes in a person who is relatively insulin sensitive, so that when that individual gets to their new stable (‘maintenance’) weight, they could eat a wider range of total daily carbs and still remain weight stable. (The carbs should not include sugar, wheat products or processed food.)
We first need to understand the science of ketosis. Ketones particularly ((beta-hydroxybutyrate [BOHB]) are the preferred fuel for the brain and to some degree the heart. Ketones allow these key organs to function as well or even better when dietary carbs are severely restricted as compared to when dietary carbohydrates are high.
Switching from carbs to ketones does not happen overnight – it takes weeks of consistently restricting carbs for this process of keto-adaptation to fully occur. But once this process is complete, the body can burn fat at over twice the rate compared to when carbs were a major component of the diet (Phinney 1983, Volek 2016).
Once keto-adapted, people consistently report that the intensity of their hunger and cravings is diminished; (Boden 2005, Mckenzie 2017) and that the daily swings in energy and mood they experienced on a high carb intake are reduced, if not banished. These problems tend to be replaced with a consistent sense of energy and mental alertness as long as a well-formulated ketogenic lifestyle is followed (Volek & Phinney 2012).
Ketones turn on your body’s defences.
Besides being the preferred fuel for the brain and heart, we have recently recognized that BOHB also functions like a hormone that signals multiple changes in gene expression (aka ‘epi-genetic effects’). Among other effects, BOHB turns on the body’s innate defenses against oxidative stress and inflammation (Schimazu 2013, Youm 2014), and it also acts to reduce insulin resistance at its source (Newman 2014).
Ketones (beta-hydroxybutyrate [BOHB] and acetoacetate [AcAc]) are produced by the liver when both serum insulin and liver glycogen levels are low (McGarry 1973). BOHB protects us from oxidative stress, inflammation, diabetes, and probably Alzheimer’s disease and aging as well (Roberts, 2017). All we need do to accrue these benefits is restrict carbs to allow the keto-adaptation process to occur.
Can a human remain in nutritional ketosis and not lose weight? Yes, when someone with some extra body fat begins a ketogenic lifestyle, perhaps it is the increased ability to burn these stores, coupled with the reduction in appetite and cravings that facilitates initial weight loss.
In this scenario, keto-adaptation facilitates weight loss, but only as long as the reduced hunger and cravings allow one to comfortably eat fewer calories per day than one burns.
Over time, most people who sustain a ketogenic lifestyle stop losing weight and find a new stable weight (Hallberg 2018). This is achieved when their natural instincts of hunger and satiety lead to an increase in dietary fat intake to balance out one’s daily expenditure. But as long as dietary protein is kept moderate and carbs low, this dietary fat is used in place of body fat to produce ketones, so clearly nutritional ketosis can be maintained without any further weight loss (Phinney 1983).
People ask if they can speed up the process without cutting back on carbs.
Here’s a problem that many people experience. They have been told that increasing blood ketones will speed their weight loss. However, rather than cutting back on carbs and avoiding extra protein to boost ketone levels, they are led to believe that they can get the same effects by adding extra MCT oil, coconut oil, or exogenous BOHB to push up blood ketone levels. But, this does not enhance their body’s ability to burn fat. It just gives them a type of fat that has to be burned (some of it as ketones) in place of body fat. No wonder they are usually disappointed when their weight loss stalls well above the goal they want to reach.
What This Means for Weight Loss and Weight Maintenance on a Ketogenic Diet
In summary, being in nutritional ketosis will accelerate the rate at which the body burns fat. If the extra fat that is burned is compensated by an increase in dietary fat, then no body fat loss will occur (but there still will be other benefits). However, most people carrying excess fat tissue who achieve nutritional ketosis by eating natural low-carbohydrate foods initially feel more satiated, allowing them to eat less fat than they burn, which results in net fat loss. But eventually, even when one is in sustained nutritional ketosis, our natural instincts prompt us to increase fat intake to meet our daily energy needs resulting in a stable weight and body composition.
Bottom line: For those wishing to lose weight additional rather than remain weight stable, one’s goal should be to reduce dietary fat intake down to the margin of satiety (just enough, but not too much) and avoid or limit non-satiating energy sources such as alcohol.
This Post had been condensed from the Virta post https://blog.virtahealth.com/weight-loss-ketogenic-diet/ By Stephen Phinney, MD, PhD and Jeff Volek, PhD, RD. Please copy and paste this link to read the original post.
Disclaimer: The content of this email or Post is not intended for the treatment or prevention of disease, nor as a substitute for medical treatment, nor as an alternative to medical advice. Use of recommendations is at the choice and risk of the reader.
I invite you to Follow my Blog, Facebook or be added to my email distribution list. My focus is to maximize my physical performance and mental clarity, body composition, and most importantly overall health with a wholesome diet and exercise
I will bring you compelling articles on Ketogenic and GAPS diets, the Super Slow High-Intensity Exercise Program and supplements.
To follow my Blog, please click the Follow button to receive an email when the next posting is available. Hint: You may have to click the Accept and Close button before follow is available.
I thrive on feedback. Please let me know that you like the Post by clicking Like, or Commenting on the content.
If you wish to contact me by Email, please email lpolstra@bell.net using this form.
May you Live Long Healthy.
Yours truly,
Lydia Polstra
Dr. Mercola interviews Travis Christofferson, the author of Tripping over the Truth: How the Metabolic Theory of Cancer Is Overturning One of Medicine’s Most Entrenched Paradigms
Christofferson: Drugs targeting DNA have been very, very disappointing. We’ve been told that these targeted therapies were going to result in cures. It’s clear that’s not the case because of the data from the Cancer Genome Atlas project. There’s just too much random diversity within the genes. It’s hard enough to find a target from one patient to the next and if you do there’s another phenomenon called intra heterogeneity, which is the difference in mutations from cell to cell within the same tumor.
James Watson Nobel, who won the Nobel Prize in 1954 for discovering the structure of DNA, noticed this and said; I am no longer giving money to the Cancer Genome Atlas project. If we’re ever going to cure cancer we’re clearly going to have to go back to the days of Warburg and focus on the metabolism.
Mercola: Warburg was the first person who noted that there’s a difference in the metabolism. Cancer cells are anaerobically metabolizing glucose (without oxygen) inefficiently and they have this relative primitive form of energy generation and it’s inefficient.
So the question becomes what caused them to revert to this? Peter Peterson out of Hopkins took it to the next step, he actually determined that there is a radically reduced number of mitochondria. There are typically several thousand in each cell comprising about a third to 50% of the volume of the inside of your cell. These generate the energies of our cells.
If you’ve got a radical reduction of those and if the ones that are left are relatively dysfunctional, not even working if they work in at all, then you’ve got a problem. So these cancer cells don’t have a choice, they have to revert to anaerobic metabolism.
Healthy mitochondria send signals, (epigenetic communication) between its cell and the nucleus and this epigenetic signalling from the mitochondria is actually what’s responsible for initiating a significant percentage of the genetic damage that has been identified so well through the DNA sequencing project, which the majority of the scientists have been focused on currently.
If we’re ever going to cure cancer we have to focus on the metabolism.
Christofferson: The mitochondrial damage is irrefutable. We look at cancer cells and the number of mitochondria are vastly reduced. When you isolate and look at the mitochondria you look at them, they’re messed up. There are protein problems; there are lipid problems, and all kinds of structural abnormalities. The question is: “Why has the cancer reverted to anaerobic energy generation?” Nobody really tied that to the terrible structure of the mitochondria. They didn’t have the tools to see the mitochondria and now we do.
Tom Seyfried, the leading edge cancer scientist, has done such a great job of piecing together the events once mitochondrial are damaged. This relationship between mitochondria and the nucleus is so important. They constantly crosstalk and mitochondrial health is correlated to the health of the entire organism, you.
The dominant theory of aging explains that you age because your mitochondria age,they take the brunt of metabolism. When you generate energy you are whipping around free radicals and they’re constantly under stress so they get banged up and beat up and you look at the antioxidants within mitochondria they have declined by about 50% with advanced age.
Mercola: It is important to note, is when they burn fuel they generate these reactive oxygen systems (ROS). But the question is what you fuel are they’re burning?
They are burning glucose (carbohydrates). They are burning dirty fuel generating tons of reactive oxygen species as opposed to burning ketones or fats.
Christofferson: As a fuel ketones are incredible, they burned clean with much less ROS or free radical generation but the clincher with this theory is that once there’s enough mitochondrial damage there is a retrograde response or an epigenetic signal to the nucleus and once this happens then you start to see the accumulation of mutations.
So the whole crux of this theory is which is first? The argument is that the metabolic theory is this mitochondrial damage is how first and then you see the mutations.The mutations appeared as the causebut in fact they are a downstream signalfrom the from the true cause. Researchers were led sort of down this wild-goose chase trying to find what these mutations were and why they were important. So now that we know this we can go back to the mitochondria and ask how do restore our cell and how do we keep them healthy?
The dietary therapy, what Tom Seyfried calls a restricted Ketogenic diet, is the foundation of this therapeutic approach because it does incredible things to the body where it differentiates between cancer cells and normal cells. When you switch from glucose metabolism to ketone metabolism you put energetic pressure on the cancer cells because they have to burn ketones in mitochondria, which is something they don’t have much of.
So we’ve noticed that once you put people in this dietary state everything becomes more effective even traditional chemotherapy even radiation and at the same time you’re mitigating side-effects because healthy tissues are able to withstand the sort of toxic payload from traditional chemotherapy. The exciting thing is when you add on these other metabolic therapies that are synergistic and their mechanisms overlap. Exogenous ketones are exciting. How far can we take that metabolic state to this tipping point where cancer cells growth is stopped but they begin to die.
We can bring blood glucose levels down way farther than most people think safely. You add gluconeogenesis inhibitors that’s one of the main culprits you have to contend with as far as keeping blood glucose down, you add exogenously tones and people are put in this different metabolic state.
They’re shifting away from carbohydrate metabolism and then add on pulses of pressure: 3–bromopyruvate(3-BrPA) and dichloroacetate (DCA) are inhibitors and Metformin. They are very non-toxic that overlap and mechanism.
This foundational shift to a ketone-based metabolism followed by these pulses of pressure appears to be the best avenue to a cure.
Ketone bodies are not just a fuel they’re signalling molecules. Incredibly restorative things happen: you completely rearrange the architecture of your DNA; you start expressing new genes; you drop down the inflammatory genes and boost all these restorative genes. There is mitochondrial biogenesis. Look at all the diseases that spin out of this metabolic dysfunction from not entering the state of ketosis periodically – neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, obesity, diabetes, heart failure, heart disease, arthritis, cancer, and the list goes on.
A shift in macromolecular consumption from carbohydrates to fats can stop diseases. It goes back to Dr. Veech who was the lineage of Otto Warburg. He got his PhD in under Hans Krebs. He’s done a lot of this ketone body research along with Cahill and he said in late 70s or 80s that so many disease states spin out of a function of mitochondrial decay and the ketone bodies can potentially mitigate this process. Now we have exotic ketones that maybe help people that aren’t able to do the dietary restrictions.
The ketogenic diet really is just the maintenance of the fasting state nutritionally. Periodic fasting can be difficult because you transition through this induction phase. Your body is tooled up to burn carbohydrates, so when you fast it has to retool and during that process you burn muscle as a bridge to get you over to fat metabolism.
All evidence points to maybe not a huge increase in lifespan but it definitely a huge increase in health span. For example, if you were predisposed to getting type 2 diabetes in midlife, if you were in ketogenic state you may never get it. So if you want to live well for a long time that is were the benefit will be.
Here is the link to Travis Christofferson’s book Tripping over the Truth: How the Metabolic Theory of Cancer Is Overturning One of Medicine’s Most Entrenched Paradigms https://www.amazon.ca/Tripping-over-Truth-Overturning-Entrenched/dp/1603587292
This Post has the highlights of the interview with Dr. Mercola & Travis Christofferson on the Metabolic Theory of Cancer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvNaO0Poeqs
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Yours truly,
Lydia Polstra
Email: lpolstra@bell.net
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Disclaimer: The content of this email or Post is not intended for the treatment or prevention of disease, nor as a substitute for medical treatment, nor as an alternative to medical advice. Use of recommendations is at the choice and risk of the reader.
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