Metabolic and Mental Health

 What are Metabolism and Metabolic Health, and How Do They Impact Mental Health?
"Metabolism is the set of life-sustaining chemical reactions in organisms.  The three main things that metabolism does is convert the energy in food to energy that is available to power the cell and therefore the organism, the conversion of elements in food into the building blocks to make proteins, lipids, nucleic acids and carbohydrates, and the elimination of metabolic waste.   Another definition of metabolism is "all the physical and chemical processes in the body that convert or use energy".  Metabolism is how we use our food to create energy.  If we consume more calories then we need we need to store the excess energy.  We store some as glycogen in the liver, but most is stored in our fat cells.  It makes sense that our bodies would have evolved with uncertainty about when we would have food and how much we would have, so we would have needed to store up excess for times when we didn't have enough.  

Metabolic dysfunction usually results from too much food intake or eating foods with a poor ratio of nutrients to calories.  If we consistently eat more calories/energy than we need, our bodies first store the excess in our fat cells but they eventually get full, and then we store fat in our organs, called visceral fat (such as fatty liver). Visceral fat interferes with the function of the organ in question and leads to disease states such as type 2 diabetes.  We need to have low levels of insulin in order to access and use the energy stored in fat.  Insulin levels rise when we eat, especially if we eat sugars and simple carbs.  When our insulin levels are high this signals our body to store energy because we have plenty for now.  The state of having high insulin levels from frequent eating is called hyperinsulinemia.  If the state of hyperinsulinemia persists our cells become less responsive to insulin, producing a state called insulin resistance.  This means too much sugar stays in the blood and not enough is available for energy use.

There can also be a connection between mental health and the gut microbiome.
Never fear, the gut bacteria are here: Estrogen and gut microbiome-brain axis interactions in fear extinction

How Do Ayahuasca and Other Psychadelics Affect the Brain?

How Ayahuasca (DMT) Affects the Inner Workings of the Brain Explained

 Ayahuasca hyper activates the Neo-cortex, the brain region where we perceive, reason, and make decisions.  It also activates the amygdala which stores our early emotional memories, in particular the very significant ones such as a death in the family.  It also activates the Insula which forms a bridge between our emotional urges and our ability to make decisions.  The Insula is where "feeling states" are created.  Our brains try to understand new experiences in terms of previous ones that are stored, especially those that are very strong or traumatic.  This creates imprints in the brain which are essentially pathways of repeated responses.  The more often the input is met and the pathway is activated, the stronger the pathway becomes.  They are built up like scar tissue.  Ayahuasca hyper activates the entire part of the brain that stores and processes emotional memories, and it may uncover memories that had been forgotten.  When hyper activated the brain is able to consciously over ride these entrenched pathways and create new responses to stimulii.  This often results in people who have used Ayahuasca gaining new perspectives on past experiences and being freed from earlier entrenched responses that where not serving them.

Mystical experiences occasioned by the hallucinogen psilocybin lead to increases in the personality domain of openness 

 "A large body of evidence, including longitudinal analyses of personality change, suggests that core personality traits are predominantly stable after age 30. To our knowledge, no study has demonstrated changes in personality in healthy adults after an experimentally manipulated discrete event. Intriguingly, double-blind controlled studies have shown that the classic hallucinogen psilocybin occasions personally and spiritually significant mystical experiences that predict long-term changes in behaviors, attitudes and values. In the present report we assessed the effect of psilocybin on changes in the five broad domains of personality – Neuroticism, Extroversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. Consistent with participant claims of hallucinogen-occasioned increases in aesthetic appreciation, imagination, and creativity, we found significant increases in Openness following a high-dose psilocybin session. In participants who had mystical experiences during their psilocybin session, Openness remained significantly higher than baseline more than 1 year after the session. The findings suggest a specific role for psilocybin and mystical-type experiences in adult personality change."

Psychedelics as Mental Health Treatment

Mental health is an area of allopathic medicine in which there still aren't many treatment options, and many people are helped only somewhat or not at all by what's available.  Recently research into the use of psychedelic drugs for legitimate therapeutic purposes has started up again after being more or less abandoned during the 60s and 70s.  Below is a TED talk about the use of LSD and psilocybin to treat Treatment-Resistant Depression and PTSD.  So far both drugs are showing promise which is  exciting because in the cases of both PTSD and Depression, many patients don't




For Further Study:

Can Magic Mushrooms Unlock Depression? | Rosalind Watts | TEDxOxford

Psilocybin may ‘reset’ the brain to help manage treatment-resistant depression

Gabor Mate - Manifesting the Mind - Inside the Psychedelic Experience

I Tried Mushrooms - Psychedelics and Schizophrenia

FULL EPISODE: The Psychedelic Frontier

The Treasure Called the Psilocybes: Paul Stamets

Ketamine infusion therapy

Here's Why You Want To Know About Mushrooms and Depression
In this short video by Dr Tracey Marks, she explains that treatment with psilocybin (a psychedelic compound found in some "magic mushrooms") can be an effective way to treat depression for the 40 % to 60 % of patients who don't recover completely from depression with already available treatment modalities.  Psilocybin activates the 5HT-2A receptor on neurons to raise levels of serotonin, and this is believed to be it's mode of action.  As few as 2 doses of psilocybin can be enough to lead to long-term increases in flexible thinking.  In the US, the FDA has granted breakthrough therapy designation to two pharmaceutical companies to develop psilocybin medication for treatment-resistant depression and "regular" depression.  The companies that are in FDA trials to develop these meds are Compass Pathways and Usona Institute.  More information is available on their websites, including info on volunteering to participate in trials. 

Psychedelics: effects on the human brain and physiology
TED talk about how psychedelic drugs free our minds to think about things in new ways, to think outside the box, to learn and grow from our experiences, and to reframe our past, giving people with PTSD the chance to process and heal.  Some of these drugs also help because they have chemicals that function exactly like serotonin.  This can explain both many of the positives (such as increased and altered sensory perception, feeling connected, enlightenment, awe, etc.) as well as negatives (thoughts of death, panic attacks, etc.).  Use of psychedelics (even after one time) has long term positive effects.  The effects of psychedelics is similar to that of meditation.  Not only do they not lead to addiction they actually treat addiction to other drugs.  They work on the serotonin receptor differently than SSRIs because instead of limiting reuptake (which is problematic), they bind directly to the serotonin receptor (to specific ones maybe?) which is safer and more effective.   

The science of psilocybin and its use to relieve suffering
"Leading psychopharmacologist Roland Griffiths discloses the ways that psychedelic drugs can be used to create spiritually meaningful, personally transformative experiences for all patients, especially the terminally ill."

Psilocybin, love and the meaning of life | Mary Cosimano | TEDxKC
This talk focuses on the central importance of love and connections for people to have meaning in their lives, and how psilocybin can provide this for many people facing a wide variety of mental health and other challenges.  This therapy is provided in a carefully designed treatment context that supports the needs of the participants needing help with everything from depression to PTSD to cancer to smoking cessation and has had remarkable results.

 

From the article "Could a Club Drug Be the Secret to Curing PTSD?" that has just appeared in the March issue of Elle magazine:

"Ever since Richard Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act in 1970, prohibiting the use of almost all psychedelics for any purpose, most scientists have regarded consciousness-altering drugs warily, if they thought about them at all. But as the war on drugs wanes and failures of U.S. drug policy become increasingly clear (witness the opioid epidemic), scientists are revisiting research on psychedelics. There are the studies of MDMA for PTSD, and scientists have also begun exploring the drug's potential to treat addiction, depression, and severe anxiety in adults with autism. Other psychedelics are also yielding promising lab results, including psilocybin (the active ingredient in so-called magic mushrooms), which teams of researchers from Johns Hopkins and New York University found can reduce anxiety and depression in cancer patients."

"Before Ecstasy became famous in the 1990s as the street drug of choice among ravers and curious college kids, a loosely knit network of psychiatrists and psychologists experimented with giving patients medical-grade MDMA, a synthetic compound originally developed by a Merck chemist in the early 1900s, to treat anxiety and depression."

"So far, 77 percent of the participants who have received MDMA in the Boulder pilot no longer meet the diagnostic criteria for PTSD, according to Marcela Ot'alora, the study's lead investigator. After another clinical trial in Charleston, South Carolina, a similar effect was seen in 83 percent of the group that received MDMA treatment (compared to just 25 percent of the group who received talk therapy alone). Perhaps most encouragingly, three and a half years after the Charleston study was completed, the benefits largely held: Three-quarters of the MDMA-treated patients who'd been deemed clinically free of PTSD remained free of it,"

Recently brain scans done of people while taking LSD have shown some of the ways that the drug has the effects that it does and why it might be so helpful for people with PTSD and other mental health challenges.  These scans show that areas of the brain that are usually not connected become connected while on the drug in ways that lead to what has been called "a more unified brain".  The visual hallucinations that are so commonly associated with LSD are created by parts of the brain not usually involved in sight rather than by the visual cortex as was previously thought.  Researchers also reported that the brains of people on LSD seemed to be functioning in a more childlike way, with fewer restrictions and limitations, than tend to be seen in adult brains.  Microdosing, which is the use of very small doses of LSD that are too low to create a noticeable psychedelic effect, are effectively used by some people to achieve the benefits of increased creativity, less restricted thinking, and a more stable and positive mood.  Microdosing has been used effectively to address some mental health issues including depression and PTSD.  Personally, I think this may be because psychedelic drugs increase sensory input while also it more pleasant and this may be an effective way to be grounded in the present, which is something that many people have found useful in coping with PTSD in particular.  

SNP testing

The term SNP stands for Single Nucleotide Polymorphism, and refers to variation in genes that arise from a single substitution of one nucleotide for another at a specific point along a gene.  Genes are segments of our DNA that are coposed of long sequences of base pairs, which are two of these nucleotides, one from each side of the DNA double helix, that "fit together" like the teeth on a zipper.  A SNP (pronounced "snip") is a variant of a gene that alters the function of the protein that is coded for by the gene.  These proteins can be enzymes, in which case the SNP will alter the rate at which the enzyme works in many cases,  or can be components of cells and tissue, in which case the function of the cell or tissue can be altered.  

Dr Amy Yasko pioneered the use of a person's SNP profile to guide biomedical intervention, which allows dietary, supplement, and other interventions to be more customized and to avoid many potential side effects or poor outcomes.  This testing was very expensive however so not accessible to many.  The company 23andMe has brought the cost way down and provides information on many more SNPs than Yasko testing has.  23andMe has stopped giving out what they call "health info" due to an order from the FDA.  This DOES NOT affect your access to your SNP data which is usually the reason to do the testing.  You can order the test here.  For some basic FAQs about suing 23andMe go here.  Many people feel uncomfortable about having this information about them "out there" so they choose to submit the test kit under a false name.  Forbes has just run an article giving an update about 23andMe's business plan and a possible sale to Genentech, which provides a little more information about what is being done with the data they are collecting.  Once the test is processed, you are sent a link to access your information online.  To find out your SNPs, download your raw data from the 23andMe website, and then run it through one of a number of apps available to generate a SNP report.

Here are some options:

Genetic Genie is free with a suggested donation of $10.  It provides a modest report with some good information about the SNPs found.  You can choose a methylation report or a detox report.

Promethease is another option, it costs $5.  There is a video on the site that gives more information about the service.

I prefer an app called LiveWello, that is more expensive at $19.95 (these costs are all per person, so if you are running 3 people's data from your family you will have to pay for each person).  LiveWello generates a much more comprehensive report, and has a sandbox feature where you can look up your SNPs in any of the raw data by typing in the gene name or rs number (a tutorial for using this feature can be found here).  You also have access to smaller reports made by other users that identify SNPs associated with specific issues, such as Parkinson's, Crohn's Disease, allergies, even production of oxytocin.  If you don't see a template that fits your needs, you can go to google and search for "risk alleles associated with ___" whatever you are interested in.  Then you can copy and paste the rs number into the sandbox feature and find out which SNPs you have for that gene.

BASIC TOOLS TO UNDERSTAND YOUR SNPs

There are a lot of tools available online to help you understand the meaning of your SNPs.  Honestly, I have found Wikipedia to be one of the most helpful resources.  The first step is often to figure out what the gene does, the second step is figure out what affect your variation has on it's function.  In addition to these sources, you can simply google your SNP and look for scientific articles that mention it.

A Catalog of Published Genome-Wide Association Studies

Genetics Home Reference

Tales From The Human Genome is a class presented by Udacity and 23andMe for beginners

SNPedia

Genopedia

dbSNP

OMIM

METHYLATION PATHWAY MAPS AND RESOURCES

Basic map from Heartfixer

Basic map from Dr Yasko

Dr Yasko's methylation maps

Methylation basics from Wikipedia

The Role of Methylation in Gene Expression

RESOURCES FROM DR AMY YASKO

Know Your Genetics will provide a Yasko Methylation Protocol Analysis

This sample MPA (from above) can help you begin to process your SNP information

Amy Yasko's book Autism: Pathways to Recovery

The workbook for Pathways to Recovery

Genetic Bypass by Dr. Amy Yasko

Articles by Dr Yasko

Videos of presentations by Dr Yasko

Slides from Dr Yasko's presentations

Critique of the NY Times Article "An Immune Disorder at the Root of Autism"

The article can be read here.  This article has a lot of truth in it, and is being widely circulated right now (at least on Facebook) and I wanted to say a few things about it.  The central role of immune dysregulation and inflammation in autism is something that is well supported by evidence.  This is not really something "new", so much as there has been a lessening of the unwillingness to consider biological aspects of autism recently.  Parents, doctors and medical researchers who have been studying the biology of autism and how to heal it have been aware of this for quite a while, and as the article states the health of the mother does seem to be very relevant for the child's risk of autism.  Again, not news if you actually follow this. I am VERY excited to see this information in the NY Times and I think it is a big step forward.  However, I would like to clarify some of the details in the article.

The author, while getting the gist right, clearly does not have the basic knowledge of the question of autism causality, the theories, and the evidence, to put this information in context and therefore to understand the implications.  For example the author says that popular awareness is fixated on vaccines as the cause of autism.  Well, anyone who has ever tried to speak about the reality of vaccine injury can attest that this is a fiercely denied idea by the majority of the public.  The second major error in the introductory paragraph is that the author claims that people are "fixated" on vaccines DESPITE recent developments in the scientific understanding of autism, when in reality these developments are what support the view of autism as vaccine injury in many cases.  This evidence explains the "how " and "why" of vaccine-induced autism.  Almost no journalists follow this science though, so they are not aware of this. 

This article makes another very common mistake that we see consistently in reporting on autism.  The author says that the reason put forth here for the cause of autism accounts for maybe one-third of cases, and then begins to speak about the theory as if it is the ONLY cause.  That is a very common mistake.  By the authors admission, two-thirds of cases of autism do not fit this explanation, or at least the way the author is understanding it.  Another common mistake is writing off as much as half of the increase in autism as better diagnosing or changes in diagnostic criteria.  While this may of course be an issue, it is a red herring and the frequency with which it is brought up undermines the urgency of the autism epidemic and undermines the credibility of autism families.  Ultimately it just keeps us focused on autism as a failure of parents, most often mothers, for either seeking a diagnosis for "free services" or out of ignorance that "kids are like that" or because expectations are too high about children's accomplishments. 

Also, because the author does not understand why some people draw a connection between autism and vaccinations, he does not understand that everything he puts forth here- about the role of infections and immune dysregulation- implicates vaccines.  Vaccines work (to the extent that they do) by simulating an infection and causing inflammation.  They are designed to make the immune system "think" that there has been a full-blown infection (despite the small amount of antigen delivered) by sending the message (chemically) for the immune system to over-react to the antigen.  This is the job of the adjuvant in the vaccine, and you can go to this post to see a presentation about the ways in which adjuvants have been shown to lead to auto-immunity, which is both defined by a dysregulated immune system and is widespread among people with autism and their families. 

The biomedical approach, which is the approach to treating autism rooted in biology and physiological and chemical causality for the symptoms of autism, is not just about vaccines.  In the model of biomed (and here), vaccines are one potential source of both toxicity and immune dysregulation, but they are not the only source for these things.  This is also true of mercury toxicity.  It is an issue relevant to vaccines, but vaccines have concerns beyond mercury and mercury can come from many sources other than vaccines.  In my family's case, the mercury came from my amalgam fillings.  This is one condition that fits this article well.  My fillings poisoned me, causing immune dysregulation and an auto-immune disorder in me, and then as my kids grew inside my body they were affected by the mercury and were born already poisoned. 

This article also rightly highlights the role of the microbial ecosystem that is part of our bodies.  Proper balance in this ecosystem is essential for health and disruptions in this system can be disastrous.  Dysbiosis (often in the gut, but not only there) is indeed one of the central biological features of autism.  However, the "hygiene hypothesis" tends to greatly oversimplify what is going on here.  It is not that some people lack microbes or were not exposed to enough of them, it's more a question that the transmission of our flora is being interrupted and changed so that children are not starting out with a robust enough system to function adequately.  Our flora is transmitted to us during birth from our mothers as we pass through the birth canal, and is then shored up by breastfeeding.  Birth interventions and lack of breastfeeding are so widespread that almost no one has not been affected, at least here in the US.  If your child, yourself, or any of the women who came before you ever took antibiotics, birth control pills, steroid medications, had any birth interventions, or were given formula (even if they were also breastfed) then your child has altered flora. 

What the "hygiene hypothesis" fails to account for is that not all microbes are interchangeable.  People with autism have no dearth of microbes and parasites in their bodies.  Parasite treatments are some of the most effective biomedical treatments around.  Likewise, people with autism have a heavy load of pathogenic microbes that are the cause of many of the symptoms.  This is the direct result of the immune dysregulation that this article discusses.  The problem is WHICH ONES they have and the difficulty their immune systems have in maintaining order in this system.  Interventions that restore balance in the flora by reducing pathogenic flora while re-introducing "friendly" flora have been very helpful in treating autism. 

I have no idea why he makes the claim that scientists studying the link between autism and inflammation are unaware of the role of our microbial ecosystems, or of an uneven distribution of autism around the world.  I've been following this research for years and this seems to be well established and understood.  Again, all I can guess is that this author, like nearly all reporters who write about autism, does not have the depth of knowledge of the research to be able to make reliable observations about it.  Also, within the autism community we are well aware of how autism is a disorder of modern living rather than something that is somehow missed in developing countries.  Many families immigrate to the US, only to have one or more children regress into autism, and then are unable to explain what autism is to relatives back in the home country who have simply never seen anything like it.  See my post on the high prevalence of autism among Somali immigrants in Minnesota for more about this.

Most of all, what the author is doing is missing the forest for the trees. Being born to a mother with asthma, or rheumatoid arthritis, or celiac disease, or metabolic syndrome, (or experiencing vaccine injury for that matter), are not "different paths" to autism.  They are all variations on the same theme.  In similar fashion, he states at the end that preventative medicine in the future will need to emulate the way humans lived in the past.  I couldn't agree more, and this is again a central idea for many people working to heal autism.  The modern diet bears almost no resemblance to the food that humans evolved eating.  In particular, humans did not evolve eating grains, and the milk supply that we have now has been altered by a recent genetic mutation and is not comparable to milk that we would have had access to even not long ago in the past.  Our environment has been saturated with chemicals that are known to be toxic and even to alter how our immune systems function.  Lastly, conventional medicine in the developed world has resulted in dramatic changes to our microbial ecosystem and relies heavily on the use of pharmacological medications, most of which strain the body in the same ways that we see in autism.   This article is a good first step but there is so much more to understand and do in regards to autism (and the other inflammatory disorders mentioned, which are indeed highly related) than giving everyone worms.

The Biochemistry of the "Critical Period" Concept in Neurological Development

I don't usually do an entire post about one article, but this article in the magazine Nature, called Neurodevelopment: Unlocking the Brain warrants that.  I worked as an autism therapist, and eventually ABA program director back in the 1990s before I had my own kids (yes the irony is not lost on me), and I can't underestimate how large a role the idea of critical periods in development has played in autism intervention (and the lack thereof).  At that time, it was accepted as an absolute truth that there are "critical periods" during which certain types of development can happen, such as speech, and once that period comes to an end, the window is closed and a person cannot ever go back and learn that skill.  For example, it was believed at that time that if a child did not begin to speak by the age of 5 they never would.  This assertion was used to deny therapy to many many children.  Well, I remember when families didn't give up on their kids, and kids began speaking at the age of 6, and 7, and even as late as 14 that I am aware of.  As usual it takes time for the dogma of the "experts" to catch up to the observed reality "on the ground".

It turns out that the brain is far more plastic (able to adapt) then was previously thought, and this article goes into some of the "hows and whys" that are being discovered about brain development and plasticity, and what implications that may have for treatment in the future.  Some of the themes discussed, such as the implications of low levels of GABA, will be familiar to many autism parents.

"What Hensch and others in the small, but rapidly advancing, field of critical-period research are finding is that those windows can be pried back open. “For the first time, we are beginning to understand the biology that underlies critical periods,” says Hensch. And that understanding is suggesting ways to intervene in various neural disorders, including intractable conditions such as adult amblyopia, in which information from one eye is not correctly processed by the brain, and possibly even autism. The work could even lead to 'plasticity pills' that enhance learning or help to wipe out traumatic memories."

“What's so interesting about Takao's work is that he has shown that even if you miss these critical periods, you still may be able to go back in and fix things,” says Charles Nelson, a neuroscientist at Boston Children's Hospital, who studies the developmental effects of early social deprivation on orphans in Romania. “The idea that you could intervene later and make up for lost time is compelling.”

"The effect of that reduction (of GABA) was far greater than either Hensch or Stryker had imagined: whereas control mice went through a typical critical period and developed amblyopia when one eye was blocked, mice with GABA deficiencies did not develop amblyopia, or have a critical period at all. Hensch and his colleagues were able to restore plasticity by administering a benzodiazepine, a drug that enhances the inhibitory effect of GABA (ref. 3).  Inhibition, the authors concluded, was a hidden force driving the onset of the visual critical period. “At the time, these ideas were just so counter-intuitive,” Hensch says. “We were turning dogma on its ear.”

"But it was unclear how the PV interneurons triggered the critical period. An important clue came from a group led by Stryker with Arturo Alvarez-Buylla and Sunil Gandhi, also at UCSF. The researchers transplanted embryonic cells that were destined to become interneurons into the brains of young mice, says Alvarez-Buylla, after which the mice “started having two critical periods”. There was the typical critical period, caused by the mouse's own interneurons, and then a later one, triggered when the transplanted interneurons began to mature⁵.  The transplanted cells, says Stryker, were pushing the system's 'reset' button."  (Could this be partly why stem cell therapy is effective in some kids?  It's triggering the beginning of a critical period?)

There is also a lot of talk in this article about amblyopia and vision development, which is a major issue for me.  I have many issues with my vision and vision processing which results in me being legally blind.  According to this article, many of my issues could be the result of something that interfered with the critical period of brain development.  This is interesting given that mercury is known to interrupt neurological processes and damage neurons, and is also closely associated with many vision and vision processing problems.  The article also mentions that video games have been used in a particular way to treat amblyopia, because the games cause a level of concentration that may release some of the chemicals in the brain that stop the critical period and "lock" the existing patterns in, what the article refers to as "functional brakes" .  Lifting those brakes can allow the brain to rewire those learned behaviors and patterns and maybe over-write dysfunctional ones.

So, What IS an Optimal Human Diet?

 Many of us who benefit from making dietary changes begin to wonder, as we tweak our diet, if the changes that we are making (while necessary in the short run) are going to contribute to supporting our health in the long run.  Dietary guidelines have had a strong presence in our media and culture for decades so we find that we may have firmly held opinions of what "healthy eating" is and what it isn't.  This can be especially true if we have done any research on our own, or have used alternative medicine.  It seems everyone has an opinion of what people should and shouldn't eat.  So who is right?

My personal ideas on this subject have changed so dramatically over time that I've joked about writing a cookbook called "How to Eat Your Hat".  I was a vegetarian for many years (which is very common for people with Pyroluria), and was a vegan before I was pregnant with my first child.  The most significant change that happened when I transitioned from vegetarianism to veganism was giving up dairy, which I had known I was IgE allergic to for years but had not felt able to give it up.  When I did give it up my asthma went away.  I took this as a sign that I was on the right track by becoming vegan...but since then I have learned that the connection between health and food is so much more complex and that while giving up dairy was positive for me at the time, becoming vegan had dire consequences for my health.  It led to the loss of my gallbladder (probably from the increase in gluten, oxalates, and plant estrogens) which in turn impacted my mitochondrial functioning (poor absorption of fats and CoQ10 among other things) which I think is one factor in why Roo developed the autism.  I can't prove that but knowing what I know now, that is how it seems.

When I first began to change Roo's diet I didn't question that the things that people bought in the grocery store to eat, or bought from restaurants, were food.  Food is what we eat, so if we eat it it's food, right?  Maybe...maybe not.  My kids' art supplies all say "non-toxic" on them, so they can be eaten.  Are they food?  Are most processed foods much better?  I will not try to convince others of what to eat in this post, but I will say a bit about how my current ideas came to be and list some of the resources that I have found helpful.  My ideas will probably continue to change as I learn more. 

I came across the idea of "traditional foods", and how they support healthy human development,  with the Weston A.Price Foundation.  I think this is a good starting point, although I think there are limitations with some of their principles in that Weston A.Price mostly studied post-agricultural societies so they were eating a more modern diet than humans evolved eating (also, they are just plain wrong on some of the details of food chemistry, such as oxalates).  Still, the improved health of these groups is a testament to the importance of diet.  It is also what introduced me to the idea that our bodies may be better suited to handle certain foods, that we have eaten for a long time, rather than other foods that are only now being introduced to our bodies.  This idea was taken further by the GAPS Diet, which led me to the idea of the Paleo Diet.

There is no single interpretation of what actually constitutes a Paleolithic way of eating and living so I am sorting through a lot of different thoughts on the subject and working out what my own opinion is.  I suspect that one reason for the variety of opinions is that there isn't ONE single optimal diet- that different variations work better for some people than others.  I suspect that people whose biochemistry is working well- whose bodies are effective and efficient at converting nutrients and other chemicals in the body from one form to another- do much better on a more plant-based diet, or may have more flexibility overall in how they eat.  I suspect that people (like myself) whose biochemistry is blocked in many places (from genetic and environmental toxicity reasons) and generally less efficient may have less flexibility in what we eat.  When it comes to whether dairy is "paleo" or not, I suspect that this has a lot to do with the difference between A2 milk (the milk all ruminants produced up until several hundred years ago), and A1 milk (which contains the A1 form of beta-casein, the result of a recent mutation in European cattle, and which is the form of casein that is so problematic).  I will elaborate more on this in another post but for now what is important is that the milk that we buy in the grocery store (especially here in the US) is NOT the same as the milk that our ancestors woudl have had access to. 

Here are some helpful resources:

This is a really interesting post by a woman who was once outspoken vegan, but who developed severe health problems despite being extremely careful of what she ate.  Here is a quote from the post- something her doctor told her as she was struggling with making the decision to start including animal products in her diet again-

"She explained how the health problems we are plagued with in the Western world are not caused by animal products, far from it. Humans have been consuming animals (in much greater quantities than we do now) for millions of years without ill effect, and historically there has never been a single vegan culture. We need to look at the recent additions to our diet to uncover the causes of our sudden modern plagues: refined sugar, hydrogenated vegetable oils, trans fats, refined flours, chemical toxicity and the industrialized denaturing of all forms of food. According to her, avoiding healthy, organic animal products was not only unnecessary for good health, but in most cases positively detrimental to our well being."

And another quote, also paraphrasing the doctor-

"The body has evolved to utilize meat efficiently and healthfully, not tablets or pills. You’ve been taking B12 supplements for years, and you’ve been trying to take iron supplements for weeks, and they haven’t been utilized by your body at all. Supplements are a very poor substitute for whole foods. Taking medication is not the best option and it is not necessary; you could almost certainly regain your health on a balanced diet. It is my recommendation that you try that.”

This is a review of an interesting book that also challenges many of the assumptions made about food and meat production, called "Meat: A Benign Extravagance" by Simon Fairle:

Is Paleo really paleo (and does it really matter)?

This post from the blog Hunt Gather Love has a great list of paleo resources, including several rebuttals to the famous book The China Study, which argues that meat is the cause of western diseases and that a vegan diet is the healthiest way to eat.  The arguments are based on poor data processing methods (such as assuming that correlation equals causality and failure to control for significant variables).  Here is another post discussing The China Study.

There have been a series of articles lately that are debunking the idea that we should be eating a high carbohydrate, low fat diet.  This dietary advice has been ubiquitous for decades now and it is coming out that it never was based on actual research.  It was a hypothesis that was deemed to be true, and so important, that it was decided by policymakers to start to get the advice out there before doing the studies that were assumed to prove it out.  When those studies did start to come in, they did not support the hypothesis at all, but the hypothesis has gained so much momentum at that point that it had become accepted as fact.  To read more about this read:
Gary Taubes' book Good Calories, Bad Calories.

What if it's All Been a Big Fat Lie?  By Gary Taubes in the New York Times magazine
 
A Reversal on Carbs from the Los AngelesTimes

Is Sugar Toxic?  from the New York Times

A Big Fat Debate

"The take-home message from this study and others like it is that — contrary to what many expect — dietary fat intake is not directly related to blood fat. Rather, the amount of carbohydrates in the diet appears to be a potent contributor."

A Big Fat Debate by Civil Eats
  
A Call for a Low-Fat Diet That Embraces Fat

Carbs Against Cardio: More Evidence that Refined Carbohydrates, Not Fats, Threaten the Heart from Scientific American

Ending the War on Fat (from TIME magazine)

Say Goodbye to Low Fat  (A former leader of the low fat movement changes her tone)

A Study on Fats That Doesn’t Fit the Story Line
Low Fat Diets Could Increase Heart Disease Risk, Say Nutrition Experts

Other resources:

The Whole30 eating plan

Why Being a Foodie Isn't Elitist

Return of the Meat Eaters: Many Lapsed Vegetarians Become "Ethical Omnivores"

The case against gluten

Nourishing Our Children, Our Food Pyramid

Benefits of Free Range vs Factory eggs

25 Reasons the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Are Wrong

Death of a PETA Spokesman

Dr Jack Kruse on Overcoming Leptin Resistance

These are notes on a presentation done by Dr Jack Kruse as part of the Paleo Summit done by Underground Wellness.  Dr Kruse is a neurosurgeon, was obese himself and regained his health and lost weight by adopting the paleo diet.  Along the way he learned about the hormone leptin and it's significance in our health.

What is Leptin?

Leptin is a hormone that is made in fat cells.  It ties in with almost every other hormone in the body.  It's a structural analog with a cytokine called IL 6.  People who are obese or are very thin are often leptin resistant.  He says "leptin resistance underpins inflammation".  He also says "to me, obesity is not a disease, obesity is a symptom of a huge underpinning biochemical process in our bodies".  He goes on to explain that a leaky gut and consumption of a diet that is mismatched to the biology of an animal is the root cause of this bioche4mical process,  of obesity.

More on Obesity....

He says that the 3 problems of obesity are inflammation, which begins in the gut, which as he says is the interface between our diet and our immune system.  The second step is when that inflammation moves out into the body into our organs, which are not all affecte4d the same way.  Lastly, once the inflammation reaches the brain, he says that is really the root cause of all the "neolithic" diseases...what he calls the diseases of modern living.

Leptin and Circadian Rhythms...

Leptin evolved in relation to the major cycles that we have on earth, the light/dark cycle of day and night as well as geothermal cycles.  He says that watching things with bright lights, such as video games, at night disrupts our circadian systems- it disrupts our sleep, which can alter our metabolism, and can actually cause inflammation at the brain level that can lead to leptin resistant and weight gain.

How Does Leptin Resistance begin?

Generally speaking though, he explains that leptin resistance begins when we eat a diet that is not suited to our biology and thus results in inflammation in the gut.  This inflammation is seen by the immune system, which lies just below the lining of the gut, and which initiates a huge number of biochemical reactions in response, including the release of an array of cytokines.  Eventually those cytokines get into the brain in places where there is no blood-brain-barrier (I also have to wonder about the presence in our environment and medicine of substances that cause the blood-brain-barrier to become permeable).  He says the area most relevant to leptin resistance is one called the Area Postremo, which correlates directly to the Vagus Nerve which forms the Gut-Brain Axis.

Is a Calorie Really a Calorie?

Mainsteam medicine and dietetics tells us that a :calorie is a calorie", but it's not that simple.  The response of our hormones to calories determines how those calories are partitioned.  In our muscles we have proteins called uncoupling proteins that allow us to burn energy as free heat.  Uncoupling means that we can eat a lot of food and then release some of those calories as heat. 

Let's talk About Technology...

While animals are dependent on their environment, humans are able to alter and create our environment.  Our ability to d to this- to alter our physical reality to meet our desires more often, has resulted in a evolutionary mismatch.  Our cultures have evolved faster than out genes have so that we make choices, such as what to eat and when, that were not biologically possible during the time that our genes were evolving.  Not only are we in a struggle between our brain and our genes every day, our brains actually have the power to alter our genes as what we eat has that power. Further, the agricultural revolution was the beginning of this- of humans eating in a way that is not a match for our biology, the beginning of chronic inflammation.

Let's Talk About Inflammation...

We need to limit inflammation so that we can reach our health potential.  We can do this by bring our living conditions such as what we eat and our sleep cycles back in line with our biology.  Disordered hormones are a sign that there is a mismatch somewhere in the body.  The incongruity of the way we live our lives with our biology is a constant stress on our leptin receptors, which ultimately results in inflammation in the body.

What About High Cholesterol and Heart Disease?

The way that Dr Kruse got healthy was to do the opposite of all the conventional wisdom about health that he learned in medical school.  80% of our brain is made of cholesterol, and every hormone in our body is made of cholesterol.  How could it make sense that such vital parts of our body could be made of something so bad for us?  Cholesterol is turned into hormones by thyroid hormone and vitamin A, so having "elevated" cholesterol can function as a reservoir to allow our body to respond quickly to hormone changes when needed.  If we have inflammation in our bodies, this inflammation can cause cholesterol to oxidize, which is problematic.

The Role of the Gut...

Dr Kruse says if we don't feel well, we can't think well.  That a healthy gut is critical to a healthy mind.  Good brain function means that our neurotransmitters are balanced and working well.  We need to have certain nutrients coming in to our systems to keep this happening.  It's not entirely true that we are what we eat- it's more accurate to say that we are what we assimilate.  if our guts are inflamed, and we aren't digesting and absorbing our food well, then we won't be able to keep our brains at optimal functioning level.

For more on Dr. Jack Kruse's  leptin plan and how to do it, go here.