“I would like to take this opportunity to thank you on behalf of all my family, for introducing us to so many lovely things…the paleo diet for example. My mother’s lupus is in remission, she is now 56 kg from 69 kg, her renal impairment has reversed. She has now normal renal functions and no blood pressure. Her facial lupus scars are fading and she is again as beautiful as she use to be. She was a very beautiful woman and she again is…thank you.

My father is also doing very well, he would be doing better, but his work does not allow him to be back home before 1am and 100 % paleo when he is out is not possible for him, but nonetheless he is doing MUCH better.

Every time my kids breeze through a virus or bounce back healthy and well we send a silent thank you to you. Merry Christmas, we hope one of these days we get the chance of meeting you in person.”

You can learn more on Dr. Loren Cordain’s Website, Robb Wolf’s Website, Art DeVany’s Website, and others.

On May 26, 2009, Robert Lustig gave a lecture called “Sugar: The Bitter Truth,” which was posted on YouTube the following July. Since then, it has been viewed well over 800,000 times, gaining new viewers at a rate of about 50,000 per month, fairly remarkable numbers for a 90-minute discussion of the nuances of fructose biochemistry and human physiology.

Lustig is a specialist on pediatric hormone disorders and the leading expert in childhood obesity at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine, which is one of the best medical schools in the country. He published his first paper on childhood obesity a dozen years ago, and he has been treating patients and doing research on the disorder ever since.
…
If Lustig is right, then our excessive consumption of sugar is the primary reason that the numbers of obese and diabetic Americans have skyrocketed in the past 30 years. But his argument implies more than that. If Lustig is right, it would mean that sugar is also the likely dietary cause of several other chronic ailments widely considered to be diseases of Western lifestyles — heart disease, hypertension and many common cancers among them.

© 2011 The New York Times Company

Read the rest. Interesting article, food for thought — and action. And, like Dr. Emily Deans says in “Do Carbs Make You Crazy?:”

What have I learned from Gary Taubes and Peter and Kurt?  Don’t believe anyone.  Look it up your own self, and see if it makes sense in the context of physiology and evolution.

• High levels of phytic acid in soy reduce assimilation of calcium, magnesium, copper, iron and zinc. Phytic acid in soy is not neutralized by ordinary preparation methods such as soaking, sprouting and long, slow cooking. High phytate diets have caused growth problems in children.
• Trypsin inhibitors in soy interfere with protein digestion and may cause pancreatic disorders. In test animals soy containing trypsin inhibitors caused stunted growth.
• Soy phytoestrogens disrupt endocrine function and have the potential to cause infertility and to promote breast cancer in adult women.
• Soy phytoestrogens are potent antithyroid agents that cause hypothyroidism and may cause thyroid cancer. In infants, consumption of soy formula has been linked to autoimmune thyroid disease.

…

• Soy foods contain high levels of aluminum which is toxic to the nervous system and the kidneys.

© 2011 The Weston A. Price Foundation

Product Description

Children With Starving Brains is a message of hope in the midst of a worldwide epidemic of autism, ADD and ADHD. This is the first book written by an experienced clinician that gives a step-by-step treatment guide for parents and doctors based on the understanding that ASD is a complex biomedical illness resulting in significant brain malnutrition. Genetic susceptibility activated by “triggers” such as pesticides and heavy metals in vaccines can lead to immune system impairment, gut dysfunction, and pathogen invasion such as yeast and viruses in many children. Dr. McCandless, whose grandchild with autism has inspired her “broad spectrum approach,” describes important diagnostic tools needed to select appropriate treatment programs. Her book explains major therapies newly available and identifies safe and effective options for parents and physicians working together to improve the health of these special children.

About the Author

Jacquelyn McCandless received her M.D. from the University of Illinois College of Medicine and is certified as a Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. Since the early 1990s, her interest in women’s issues and sexuality has led to an alternative medicine practice with a focus on anti-aging, brain nutrition, and natural hormone therapy. In 1996, after her granddaughter was diagnosed with autism, she returned even more to basic medicine and began working with biomedical aspects of developmentally delayed children. She now utilizes the knowledge she gained searching for treatments for her grandchild to help other ASD children.

© 1996-2011, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates

On Amazon, the book is described as follows:

Experts agree that America is in the midst of a disturbing epidemic of what has thus far been diagnosed as autism. In just thirty years autism diagnoses have risen from 1 in 5,000 children to 1 in 110, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But in the history of our society there has never been an “epidemic” of any developmental or genetic disorder—it is scientifically impossible. So what is this mysterious affliction known as “autism,” and how can we stop it? Dr. Goldberg and his colleagues illustrate why autism cannot be genetic, but is a symptom of a treatable neurological disease that attacks the brain’s immune system. Readers will come to understand:

• Autism is not psychological or developmental, but a medical disease.
• Autism is caused by a dysfunction in the neuro-immune system and often by secondary neurotropic viruses that impact the neuro-immune system and brain.
• Illnesses such as autism, ADD/ADHD, and chronic fatigue syndrome all have different “labels” but are actually variations on the same thing: neuro-immune dysfunction syndromes (NIDS)

• A NeuroSPECT scan is a diagnostic tool which, used in combination with proven therapies and treatments described in this book, is saving lives today, while opening the door to new therapies.
• What you can do to transform your own life or the lives of your loved ones.

Dr. Goldberg believes that in order to save the next generation of children from the incurable stigma of an autism diagnosis, we must quickly realize that all of these disorders are the result of a curable disease process.

© 1996-2011, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates

In a positive reader review, Eric Gfesser says:

A review of this book in just a few short paragraphs is difficult, but some of Goldberg’s remarks simply need to be shared here. In chapter 11, Goldberg writes that “it has become obvious over the years, many errors, misdirections in research have occurred, but looking back, the mistakes have occurred in spite of good intentions by contributors and parents. We all grew up, and I was trained with a strong belief in our ‘ivory towers’. As echoed in the Hollywood community, in theory this was the era in which ‘there was no disease we couldn’t solve with enough funding’. It is obvious to me and to many frantic parents by now that our ‘ivory towers’, the main medical focus led by psychiatrists (as noted, these disorders as defined decades ago were not considered to have primary medical issues/problems), and all the money to date, have not remotely helped solve the real crisis, a true medical crisis facing these children and adults. The situation is so bad, so controlled, that I have been told multiple times that in major institutions, if you want to study developmental or genetics, you will likely be funded (look at all the money raised, and added to this system by congress and private support groups), but if you want to study immune or viral, not only should you not expect funding, but you may be reprimanded (bad judgment if not a very high up researcher) or even let go. Somehow, that does not resemble the medical or academic world I was exposed to or have believed in.”

Earlier, in chapter 7, during his discussion of the role of diet elimination and reduction of allergy-related stresses, Goldberg comments that “the idea of removing dairy was not always an accepted practice. It has been a sad point for medicine that if we cannot conclusively document or prove with markers what is happening to the body, the medical profession is all too quick to dismiss it. I had professors who taught me to think, question, understand, and be skeptical. Sadly we have entered an era of medicine in which you do A, B, C, and D, but if you do not respond to ABCD, you are often out of luck or considered to be psychosomatic. We are in a world in which the general pediatrician has to be very cautious, very afraid of doing anything not dictated as correct by the AAP or his or her local medical society.” Well said.

© 1996-2011, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates

There is another post-worthy probiotics paper on the hopper, but before that I wanted to cover an article called Breakfast Staple Types Affect Brain Gray Matter Volume and Cognitive Function in Healthy Children (freely available on PLoS one).  I like some parts of this paper, though it is observational in nature, so keep that in mind.

As we all know, our big old brains develop not only prenatally, but also throughout childhood and adolescence.  In children, several studies have been done showing nourishing breakfasts help cognitive performance compared to skipping breakfast – especially the “high quality” breakfasts, with one study showing that a breakfast of low glycemic index foods having an immediate positive effect on attention throughout the morning (1).

In other introductory information, many studies in children have been able to correlate the amount of brain gray matter (vs. white matter) and IQ, especially gray matter in the prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortex and the cingulate gyrus.  Therefore, since breakfast types affect cognitive function, and brain structure can correlate with IQ, does breakfast type correlate with brain structure and IQ?  I don’t know.  Let’s find out.

…
So all told, this study is only an observation, and causal factors cannot be determined with this dataset.  And I think the whole high GI/low GI chase is probably a red herring.  These Japanese kids were all likely relatively low-fat and high carb compared to say, American kids of the same age, and I do tend to think that healthy, low-toxicity carbs and fruit are fine for kids, who are not as likely to have leptin resistance as their adult counterparts.  As for the fat issue – I think a common sense way to think about this issue is to look at neonates.  They are the extreme version of the child, after all, and everyone can agree about the best food for them (human breast milk).  Neonates need a diet high in sugar (though lactose does not contain fructose) and 50% fat with lots of saturated fat.  I don’t see how fat can be vital for the baby brain but somehow becomes toxic for the growing child brain.  I wish someone could explain that to me in a way that makes any physiologic sense, because it seems to be taken for truth by so many medical professionals and scientists.   If you can explain exactly when and how fat becomes toxic (somewhere presumably between the ages of 3 and 5, which is when ancestral humans were weaned?) drop me a comment.  “Lipotoxicity” doesn’t count without more information as to the specific mechanism – neither do studies poisoning animals and/or humans with large amounts of corn oil or trans fats.

There is a nice comment to the article:

Do what I did: Find candy bars with superior nutritional quality to the cereal and serve those instead. Suddenly the wife sees a different point of view.

In my case it was snickers versus pop-tarts. Turns out the snickers were slightly lower in carbs, lower in total calories, higher in protein and had no hydrogenated oil!

Watching my kids sitting at the table for breakfast wolfing down a snickers bar and knowing that was actually superior to a pop-tart made me laugh. And it finally convinced my wife to toss the pop-tarts and we started cooking eggs in the morning.

The way in which most people stay in shape is fundamentally broken. They work a desk job for 8-12 hours, and then go to a gym three times a week for 45 minutes to (supposedly offset) that desk job. As the New York Times recently wrote, sitting kills.

According to research done by the Vermont Board of Education, exercise is not only healthy for you, but it also increases your productivity. Increased blood flow leads to greater cognitive abilities — the Greeks knew this. The idea of making the white collar office a healthier environment has started to enter mainstream social consciousness. A small number of offices across the country have slowly begun to endorse the idea of exercising while doing a white collar job (not before or after), e.g., walking on a treadmill while doing your job at Mutual of Omaha.

…

First, here are our core operating principles:
- Healthy alternatives should be truly viable alternatives, not luxury products. Almost all of our ideas cost the same or less than setting up a conventional office.
- Motion is better than no motion; stasis kills. (I would call that a life principle, not just a fitness principle.)
- Standing is healthier than sitting. Excess sitting can even shorten your life.
- Standing on a flat surface is healthier than standing on a distorted surface.

Mr. Teten then goes on to provide some detailed ideas to make your office/workspace — and hence yourself — healthier. Check out the article!

When I was 14, I went to the emergency room with 4 cysts which had ruptured on my ovaries in unison (utterly agonizing pain). But after the ultrasound confirmed that the cysts had ruptured, the doctors said I should be fine and those too were ignored.

I had other signs that something was wrong with my body. When I was 12 my hip joint fell out of its socket and I had to go to the ER to get it put back in place. They didn’t know why it happened so they sent me on my way (my hip and my shoulder continued to do this until I was 26, when I quit eating gluten).

Once I had a head ache so bad it sent me to the ER. The pain that day was worse than childbirth. The spinal tap showed nothing and so it too was ignored.

I looked so healthy despite the symptoms
I guess it might have been hard to take me seriously since I was such a pretty young teen. How could anyone so pretty and thin be such a wreck? And so, I was eventually diagnosed with mental problems. All the cramps, the diarrhea, the pain, the joint problems, the feeling of being out of control were all in my head.

By the time I was 12 it would become the job of psychiatrists to fix me, but they didn’t do a bit of good for someone whose mind suffered as a result of malnourishment and hormonal imbalances. (Even today it seems psychiatrists are mostly clueless about the connection between the mind and the body. Depression and mental problems are totally avoidable and correctable. Emily Deans is aware of this. I wish she had been my shrink.)

…

Like with every other modern health condition PCOS can be avoided and controlled by diet and lifestyle changes. (Genetics can predispose a person to develop the condition but genetics are rarely the cause of disease. Check out this article on Mark’s Daily Apple for more information about the relationship between genetics and disease.)

After learning about grains and sugars, I discovered Loren Cordain’s book, The Paleo Diet. My health improved immediately and within 3 months I was pregnant. It was amazing that I was starting to get my hormonal problems under control but, unfortunately, a return to an evolutionary diet was not the whole solution for me.

So I started taking vitamins, minerals, and hormone balancing herbs. I stopped over-exercising. I did all the things that I read should take care of the problem. But I still didn’t fully recover – many of my thousand symptoms improved but not all of them. For years, even after going Primal, I struggled with (minor by this point) PCOS symptoms.

Read the article to find out what else Mrs. Emch did to return to health — to a natural state of physical health, mental health, and well-being. Very interesting read!