Whole Food Plant-Based Diet

[thisAngelBites]

I have noticed that when people go vegan from the standard american diet (meaning a fair amount of processed stuff), they initially feel great. Over time (meaning a couple of years) their health starts to wane and they start to look and feel worse. I have a friend that developed rheumatoid arthritis after being vegan for three years, and then got rid of it from going about 95% carnivore. He's healthy now and is effortlessly lean and strong (he is not a bodybuilder but sporadically lifts heavy things as he wants to make sure his muscle mass is at least not decreasing).

I take from this (and other stories from people I know) that people are different and there is not one right thing for everyone.

If you do decide to become vegan, I would suggest (in light with what IronLiver said above) that you pre-soak (and then dry) grains and nuts etc in order to remove phytic acid and other phytates, to increase the bioavailability of nutrients and to ensure that you do not irritate your gut too much. Be wary of processed vegan food and eat real food almost exclusively. Lots of packaged stuff contains rubbish like carrageenan, which is often used to change the consistency of processed food, but is also used to induce the symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease in lab animals (this is at high doses, but still, if you are going to make your gut work hard and eat a lot of things that plants don't want you to digest, you should be quite mindful of gut health, IMO).

You also need to be mindful of how a plant diet might skew your nutrition. For example, almonds and most nuts are quite high in omega 6 oils, which are inflammatory in excess. You won't be able to eat fish/shellfish with their higher omega 3 content, and plant based omega 3 like flax and algae is far less bioavailable than animal sources.

Lastly, do you have any genetic reason that makes you prone to high LDL? I have a variant of a lipoprotein that makes me prone to high LDL, and if I eat well and fast occasionally (meaning 36-40 hour fasts a couple times a month, and then I do a four or five day water fast once a quarter) my lipids are perfect and beautiful. This works really well for me and does not carry risks of statins (like diabetes and cognitive/memory decline).

Also you should know that there are some people that do not think that high LDL is the issue at all, and cite studies that show that ~50% of all heart attacks occur in people with normal or low LDL, and people over 60 with the highest LDL-C values actually live the longest. Those people typically think that it's the great rise in metabolic disease that is causing the atherosclerosis and that all the unnatural sugars and refined carbs are the issues. They suggest that that your insulin sensitivity (as measured by watching how quickly your post prandial glucose reverts to baseline) is the best predictor of cardiac health. So that might be something to consider.

I would keep monitoring all your biomarkers as you have been, and watch how any change you make affects you. This is a great way to find what works best for you.

[IronLiver]

Also you should know that there are some people that do not think that high LDL is the issue at all, and cite studies that show that ~50% of all heart attacks occur in people with normal or low LDL, and people over 60 with the highest LDL-C values actually live the longest. Those people typically think that it's the great rise in metabolic disease that is causing the atherosclerosis and that all the unnatural sugars and refined carbs are the issues. They suggest that that your insulin sensitivity (as measured by watching how quickly your post prandial glucose reverts to baseline) is the best predictor of cardiac health. So that might be something to consider.

The biggest problem with cholesterol seems to be eating cooked vegetable oils, margarine, pam, and hydrogenated oils. These oils will harden in the arteries and crystallize turning into rock like substances. Harmful cholesterol can also come from cooking animal fats, because our body does not contain the neccesary enzymes to properly digest cooked meats and eggs especially as we get older. Its the cholesterol that the liver produces from these cooked fats and cooked cholesterol thats a problem.

After studying diets of different indigenous people that don't get cancer or just about any other ailments that we get today, the common factor to living a long healthy life is eating a lot of raw animal fats. It would seem that cancer is basically a fat deficiency. A deficiency in utilizable cholesterol that normally dissolves and eliminates dead cells. Eating raw uncooked fats, like unsalted raw butter, raw eggs, cream, and cheeses will provide the body with good cholesterol, making a high cholesterol level beneficial and very healthy.

[Gallowmere]

The biggest problem with cholesterol seems to be eating cooked vegetable oils, margarine, pam, and hydrogenated oils. These oils will harden in the arteries and crystallize turning into rock like substances. Harmful cholesterol can also come from cooking animal fats, because our body does not contain the neccesary enzymes to properly digest cooked meats and eggs especially as we get older. Its the cholesterol that the liver produces from these cooked fats and cooked cholesterol thats a problem.

After studying diets of different indigenous people that don't get cancer or just about any other ailments that we get today, the common factor to living a long healthy life is eating a lot of raw animal fats. It would seem that cancer is basically a fat deficiency. A deficiency in utilizable cholesterol that normally dissolves and eliminates dead cells. Eating raw uncooked fats, like unsalted raw butter, raw eggs, cream, and cheeses will provide the body with good cholesterol, making a high cholesterol level beneficial and very healthy.

That entire last paragraph is pure conjecture on the part of some YouTube wank. The Hadza for example, don’t have these issues and largely consume their calories from honey, tubers, and leaner game animals.
The common denominator is related to the first paragraph. They don’t eat a shitload of chemically extracted vegetable oils, or a shitload grain products due to the lack of agriculture. They do not all eat large quantities of raw animal fats; pretty much none actually. They have fire. They’re not pre-flint discovery cavemen.

Stop listening to nonsense.

[thisAngelBites]

You would think that information about what people eat would sort out any questions about what to eat for longevity, but the Hadza eat very differently to the Okinawans, yet both seem to be long-lived and healthy. People have historically eaten what they can get where they live, which is naturally vastly different at the equator than close to poles.

Jeff Leach, who studies the Hadza and has probably written the studies that everyone has seen about their diets also took a trip to Tanzania with a bunch of crap processed food with him and when he got there he tested their gut bacteria, then fed that rubbish to those people he was studying there for a few days, and then tested their gut biome again and was shocked to see that their biome did not change. He was expecting radical differences due to the fact that when he had previously tested his biome before his trip, and then tested it again after a couple of days there eating local food, it was very very different. He presumed it was the food, but then why didn't the microbiomes change when eating the processed food? There are varying theories about the amount of light influencing health more than food, but I think it's not yet known for certain.

Having said that, I have never seen a study that shows that eating raw dairy or cheese gets a favourable health outcome. Milk is a very pro-growth food, with insulin like growth factors and in nature only young animals eat these quick growth-promoting foods, and they have been associated with breast and prostate cancer, as far as I can recall. But I would be interested if anyone knows of anything saying that raw milk or cheese (these are very easily accessible here in Europe, and some places (the netherlands comes to mind) have very high consumption, but also have v high breast cancer rates, for example.

[IronLiver]

You would think that information about what people eat would sort out any questions about what to eat for longevity, but the Hadza eat very differently to the Okinawans, yet both seem to be long-lived and healthy. People have historically eaten what they can get where they live, which is naturally vastly different at the equator than close to poles.

Jeff Leach, who studies the Hadza and has probably written the studies that everyone has seen about their diets also took a trip to Tanzania with a bunch of crap processed food with him and when he got there he tested their gut bacteria, then fed that rubbish to those people he was studying there for a few days, and then tested their gut biome again and was shocked to see that their biome did not change. He was expecting radical differences due to the fact that when he had previously tested his biome before his trip, and then tested it again after a couple of days there eating local food, it was very very different. He presumed it was the food, but then why didn't the microbiomes change when eating the processed food? There are varying theories about the amount of light influencing health more than food, but I think it's not yet known for certain.

Having said that, I have never seen a study that shows that eating raw dairy or cheese gets a favourable health outcome. Milk is a very pro-growth food, with insulin like growth factors and in nature only young animals eat these quick growth-promoting foods, and they have been associated with breast and prostate cancer, as far as I can recall. But I would be interested if anyone knows of anything saying that raw milk or cheese (these are very easily accessible here in Europe, and some places (the netherlands comes to mind) have very high consumption, but also have v high breast cancer rates, for example.

I would recommend looking into the work of Weston Price who traveled to many different indigenous groups in the 1930's and studied all the different diets. Every healthy native culture he studied ate animal foods raw with very few vegitable foods. The milk, cheese and butter of Swiss villagers and African herdsmen were eaten raw and never heated. Animal organs in every culture were eaten raw. Eskimos of Arctic regions ate raw meat and fish. Islanders in the South Pacific and coastal Australian Aborigines ate meat raw, including shellfish.

You will probably not find a study that will say that cheese or raw milk is healthy, in fact you will most likely find the opposite. This is why it's illegal to sell fresh milk in most places. You have to make sure to pasteurize the milk to kill all those terrible bacteria that might kill you! Or better yet, let's just replace milk with cruelty free soy milk and almond milk to make the vegans happy.

[Gallowmere]

I would recommend looking into the work of Weston Price who traveled to many different indigenous groups in the 1930's and studied all the different diets. Every healthy native culture he studied ate animal foods raw with very few vegitable foods. The milk, cheese and butter of Swiss villagers and African herdsmen were eaten raw and never heated. Animal organs in every culture were eaten raw. Eskimos of Arctic regions ate raw meat and fish. Islanders in the South Pacific and coastal Australian Aborigines ate meat raw, including shellfish.

You will probably not find a study that will say that cheese or raw milk is healthy, in fact you will most likely find the opposite. This is why it's illegal to sell fresh milk in most places. You have to make sure to pasteurize the milk to kill all those terrible bacteria that might kill you! Or better yet, let's just replace milk with cruelty free soy milk and almond milk to make the vegans happy.

Price was also a dentist (and reputedly horrible one at that) who believed that TB was caused by diet. The man was looking for anything and everything to prove his weird ass theories, and his journals have been shown to possess several things that can only be construed as outright lies, or utter incompetence in observation.

Please tell me this isn’t what you’re basing most of your thoughts on.

[thisAngelBites]

Raw milk is legal where I live, and although I gave my child limited raw milk after weaning, I instead really moved towards water instead. No other animal consumes the milk of another species, and no animal has milk past the very intense growth stage of childhood (this is in line with what I said earlier about the abundance of insulin like growth factors). I'm one of the people that thinks screwing with mother nature in this way is usually not good, but other people don't think it's an issue, or else they just don't know.

PS - I read Weston Price about 20 years when I got interested in nutrition, and like most experts I have read, I found some things I agreed with and others I didn't. I think we can eat more real food without consuming milk throughout our lives. If I was going to drink milk, I would always prefer raw, but I would rather not consume much milk, and I save cheese for occasional treats (and we get very good raw cheese here, and when I go over to France to shop).

[IronClydes]

I have noticed that when people go vegan from the standard american diet (meaning a fair amount of processed stuff), they initially feel great. Over time (meaning a couple of years) their health starts to wane and they start to look and feel worse. I have a friend that developed rheumatoid arthritis after being vegan for three years, and then got rid of it from going about 95% carnivore. He's healthy now and is effortlessly lean and strong (he is not a bodybuilder but sporadically lifts heavy things as he wants to make sure his muscle mass is at least not decreasing).

I take from this (and other stories from people I know) that people are different and there is not one right thing for everyone.

If you do decide to become vegan, I would suggest (in light with what IronLiver said above) that you pre-soak (and then dry) grains and nuts etc in order to remove phytic acid and other phytates, to increase the bioavailability of nutrients and to ensure that you do not irritate your gut too much. Be wary of processed vegan food and eat real food almost exclusively. Lots of packaged stuff contains rubbish like carrageenan, which is often used to change the consistency of processed food, but is also used to induce the symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease in lab animals (this is at high doses, but still, if you are going to make your gut work hard and eat a lot of things that plants don't want you to digest, you should be quite mindful of gut health, IMO).

You also need to be mindful of how a plant diet might skew your nutrition. For example, almonds and most nuts are quite high in omega 6 oils, which are inflammatory in excess. You won't be able to eat fish/shellfish with their higher omega 3 content, and plant based omega 3 like flax and algae is far less bioavailable than animal sources.

Lastly, do you have any genetic reason that makes you prone to high LDL? I have a variant of a lipoprotein that makes me prone to high LDL, and if I eat well and fast occasionally (meaning 36-40 hour fasts a couple times a month, and then I do a four or five day water fast once a quarter) my lipids are perfect and beautiful. This works really well for me and does not carry risks of statins (like diabetes and cognitive/memory decline).

Also you should know that there are some people that do not think that high LDL is the issue at all, and cite studies that show that ~50% of all heart attacks occur in people with normal or low LDL, and people over 60 with the highest LDL-C values actually live the longest. Those people typically think that it's the great rise in metabolic disease that is causing the atherosclerosis and that all the unnatural sugars and refined carbs are the issues. They suggest that that your insulin sensitivity (as measured by watching how quickly your post prandial glucose reverts to baseline) is the best predictor of cardiac health. So that might be something to consider.

I would keep monitoring all your biomarkers as you have been, and watch how any change you make affects you. This is a great way to find what works best for you.

What are your thoughts on statins?

Staying with animal meats, following a lot of the advice I got here, adding red meat, soaking & dehydrating almonds, keeping carbs at my average low, etc.

Doc wants me to try a statin at half dose in 6 weeks following another blood test.

Yes, I genetically predisposed to these LDL, HDL, and cholesterol levels being on the wrong end. But I am in physically excellent health aside from these.


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[GearHeaded]

What are your thoughts on statins?

Staying with animal meats, following a lot of the advice I got here, adding red meat, soaking & dehydrating almonds, keeping carbs at my average low, etc.

Doc wants me to try a statin at half dose in 6 weeks following another blood test.

Yes, I genetically predisposed to these LDL, HDL, and cholesterol levels being on the wrong end. But I am in physically excellent health aside from these.


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statins are likely going to make you feel ill

cholesterol issues are not that concerning.. in fact people with high cholesterol generally live longer then those with lower