Useful reference on artificial sweetners, stress reduction techniques...

[Benko]

Interesting info very worth reading on many topics e.g. supplements, diet, sweetners, "hacking the body".  I'm not suggesting buying anything from them.

http://www.bulletproofexec.com

Here is their recommended diet (included sweetners):
http://www.bulletproofexec.com/the-comp ... roof-diet/

NB:  this reference sells stuff and does send one e-mail advertising their products (if you sign up to be on their mailing list).  HOWEVER they are clearly keeping up with latest research in many different areas and are worth reading on many different areas (some cool info about supplements in general)

[Gumby]

I like a lot of Dave Asprey's paleo-ish recommendations, and while his low-carb diet is ideal for those with metabolic issues and brain issues, most low-carb diets lack resistant starch and just don't provide enough fermentable fibers for a healthy microbiome.

As you know, the Paleo world is currently divided into two camps: low carb and moderate "safe" carbs.

When Loren Cordain wrote the original Paleo Diet book, he hypothesized that the "Paleo Diet" should be low carb. Jimmy Moore, Art De Vany, Dave Asprey, Ron Rosedale, Robb Wolf, and a few others are in that low carb camp – and sticking with it to the bitter end. And while there is a ton of research showing the great (short term) therapeutic effects of low carb dieting, the long term research on low carb dieting isn't as clear cut.

Chris Kresser, Paul Jaminet, Kurt Harris, Stephan Guyenet, Richard Nikoley (and Marc Sission to a lesser degree) are in the moderate carb camp for those without metabolic issues — and they both recommend modified low carb diets for those with metabolic issues. They believe there is strong evidence that moderate "safe" carb consumption is vital for a healthy immune function and healthy gut flora.

But, here's where it gets interesting.... Resistant Starch.

Resistant Starch is an undigestible starch found in potatoes and other starchy vegetables — and it is sorely lacking in low carb diets.

Richard Nikoley — who runs the blog FreeTheAnimal.com — at the advice of one of his own blog commenters decided to start experimenting with Resistant Starch with n=1 experiments and a few tablespoons of raw Bob's Red Mill Unmodified Potato Starch (an excellent source of Resistant Starch). Both Richard and this commenter — and many of his readers — had started becoming disillusioned with low carb Paleo over the past few years and found their blood sugar control slowly getting worse over time and other health issues cropping up — a side effect more and more people are noticing from long-term low carb dieting. So, while Richard had already begun reintroducing starches back into his diet, this one reader encouraged Richard to look at the studies that had been done on Resistant Starch over the past few decades.

What they found was a treasure trove of research that had been largely ignored by many researchers — cast aside as a worthless undigestible fiber. Resistant Starch improves insulin sensitivity even in people with metabolic syndrome. It promotes greater butyrate production than other prebiotics (and better than Asprey's butter eating). The improved butyrate production is likely why Resistant Starch consumption correlates with reduced colon cancer. And, here's the kicker, eating a few grams of Resistant Starch can lower postprandial insulin and blood glucose levels.

In other words, the research suggests that if you take 1 Tablespoon of unmodified potato starch, just before eating a ton of carbs, you can actually prevent an insulin spike while improving your blood sugar control over the long term. And nobody knows exactly why. Richard, and many of his readers were able to confirm through self-experimentation eating 140g of starch in a single meal and blood sugar only spiking to 110!

A diabetic reader was able to eat CUP AND A HALF of potato salad and had their blood sugar only "spike" to 125mg/dl.

Turns out Resistant Starch is a main source of food for your gut biome — a natural prebiotic. It seems that if you don't feed your gut flora fermentable fibers, from carbs, your flora will dwindle and the mucus lining and mucin in your stomach becomes compromised as your remaining gut flora start to gnaw on you for a food source.

Chris Kresser recently hosted Jeff Leach on his podcast, last week. Jeff is the co-founder of the American Gut Project, a non-profit research group that aims to sequence the gut of a wide range of people. In that podcast, they discuss the importance of healthy "safe"carb and fermentable fiber consumption and the potential dangers of low carb dieting with respect to the gut:

Jeff Leach: One of the big things that the low carb diets do is they really drop out the resistant starch in the diet.  And what’s interesting about a lot of butyrate producers, Roseburia and these guys and Eubacterium, they’re cross-feeders.  For example, you have certain species of bacteria, groups of bacteria that break down whatever, cellulose and hemicellulose, and produce acetate and propionate and all these things, but a lot of the butyrate producers are cross-feeders and they’re feeding off of other activities.  So, when I see a very low carb person, I often see not only a huge drop in dietary fiber, but a drop in diversity of dietary fiber and a significant drop in resistant starch, which is a huge source of nutrients for the microbiome as well. Resistant starch is often called the third dietary fiber... But I lump it all together with anything that escapes digestion in the upper GI tract and ends up in your colon and is available for fermentation, and it’s a lot of things besides just dietary fiber.  But I’m concerned about it for the exact reasons that you are.  We don’t have the data.  Nobody has done any nice clinical controlled trials, but when you starve the bacteria, you may see an increase in mucin degraders like Akkermansia and a few other ones.  That shift in the pH is going to provide opportunities for pathogens to maybe bloom up that may cause some down-the-road, long-term problems.  But again, maybe not.  Nobody knows for sure, but if you’re shifting that pH and you’re not fermenting, you’re opening the pathogen’s door.  It’s going to take a long time to unwind this, but I think the more low carb people we can get in the study, we can contribute to the conversation at least to the point where it can serve as a baseline for maybe more controlled clinical kinds of studies.  But I would never recommend a low carb diet.  I think you can eat lots and lots of healthy carbs and maintain your weight...The low carb thing is really terrifying to me from a microbiome perspective, but I want to couch that in saying that that’s not based on any data, so to speak.  It’s just based on what we know about fermentation.

Source: RHR: You Are What Your Bacteria Eat: The Importance of Feeding Your Microbiome – With Jeff Leach

I will echo, that Leach admits that he doesn't have enough data yet to make a definitive statement.

While Asprey is actually a big fan of Chris Kresser and Paul Jamiet — he's had them both on his own podcast and regularly recommends their diets as alternatives to his Bulletproof Diet — I think that Asprey will eventually need to address the problems with potential low-carb fermentation issues. Knowing Asprey, he'll probably just start selling his own line of Unmodified Potato Starch .

It's also worth pointing out that Asprey is mostly focussed on brain performance. A low carb Ketogenic diet is probably ideal for strong brain performance, but probably isn't ideal for a strong immune response.

And what we see in the Paleosphere over the past few months is that a lot of Paleos are experimenting with Resistant Starch now — taking 1-4 Tablespoons of Bob's Red Mill Unmodified Potato Starch (retails for ~$3.99 for a bag) — and they are beginning to see that significant quantities of potatoes, cassava and other nutrient-dense starchy tubers/bulbs likely played a huge role in our evolution by providing our bodies with fermentable fibers that fed our microbiomes, improved out blood glucose control and provided us with energy and nutrition that sustained some cultures with sustenance for months at a time.

Very interesting times!

[Gumby]

Oh... and one other neat side effect of increased Resistant Starch consumption is very vivid dreams. I can confirm that.

And one downside of increased fermentable carbohydrates is that people with SIBO and IBS may need to exercise caution and perhaps start very slow — though even they may likely benefit in the long run.

Anyone with digestive issues, particularly FODMAP intolerance or IBS, may want to exercise caution as fermentable carbohydrates often irritate or exacerbate those issues. On the other hand, there’s preliminary (and mostly theoretical, as it hasn’t been directly tested) evidence that resistant starch may actually treat small intestinal bacterial overgrowth by “flushing”? the pathogenic bacteria out in the feces. Adding resistant starch to the rehydration formula given to cholera patients, for example, is an effective treatment because the cholera bacteria attach themselves to the starch granules almost immediately.

Source: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/resistan ... eficiency/

In other words, SIBO pathogens may get swept out of small bacteria as they attach themselves to the resistant starch granules, while good flora are provided fermentable fiber in the large intestine.

Chris Kresser also believes that Resistant Starch cab be an effective treatment for SIBO, paradoxically — and has seen some early success with his patients...

I’ve found that starting with a very low dose of prebiotics or resistant starch and building up slowly over time helps with SIBO over the long-term, even in those with FODMAP intolerance. It seems counterintuitive, and perhaps it is, but as I mentioned on the show the key to healing the gut ultimately is restoring a normal microbiota… and that’s hard to do without these fermentable fibers.

Source: RHR: You Are What Your Bacteria Eat: The Importance of Feeding Your Microbiome – With Jeff Leach

[Benko]

Gumby,

Even forgetting details/disagreements of general diet theory such as you mention, Asprey keeps up on supplements,, which sweetners are healthy/not, software which can increase IQ, meditation type software health benefits of particular foods such as coffee, etc., etc. so I view him as worth reading.

"As you know, the Paleo world is currently divided into two camps: low carb and moderate "safe" carbs"

Actually I didn't know that as such, although I am vaguely aware there are differing opinions in the paleo world on whether things ranging from potatoes to lentils, etc are "safe".

"And one downside of increased fermentable carbohydrates is that people with SIBO "

Uh ya.  I have some SIBO issues and don't do well with e.g. FOS but oatmeal, lentils and peas are fine.  I've never noticed problems with potatoes as such, but I'll have to pay attention.  Also I've had various wheat free things which contained some kind of starch as an ingredient which did not agree with my body.  I would also have to wonder if eating potatoes and eating lots of potato start might not be the same thing to my body.

[Gumby]

Even forgetting details/disagreements of general diet theory such as you mention, Asprey keeps up on supplements,, which sweetners are healthy/not, software which can increase IQ, meditation type software health benefits of particular foods such as coffee, etc., etc. so I view him as worth reading.

Me too. I listen to his podcast and I like most of what he says. He definitely knows his stuff. His Earthing recommendations and HeartMath recommendations were a huge help for me. Though, I find that he is a bit too shameless with his product placement, but I can forgive him for that. But, if you listen to him enough, he basically admits that he just copies most of his dietary recommendations from other Paleo authors/bloggers.

"As you know, the Paleo world is currently divided into two camps: low carb and moderate "safe" carbs"

Actually I didn't know that as such, although I am vaguely aware there are differing opinions in the paleo world on whether things ranging from potatoes to lentils, etc are "safe".

Yeah, I thought I had referenced the disagreement in another low-carb thread. No worries.

"And one downside of increased fermentable carbohydrates is that people with SIBO "

Uh ya.  I have some SIBO issues and don't do well with e.g. FOS but oatmeal, lentils and peas are fine.  I've never noticed problems with potatoes as such, but I'll have to pay attention.  Also I've had various wheat free things which contained some kind of starch as an ingredient which did not agree with my body.  I would also have to wonder if eating potatoes and eating lots of potato start might not be the same thing to my body.

Lentils are a good source of Resistant Starch (5-10g of RS per cup, cooked), so that is a good sign. (Raw Potato Starch is 8g of RS per Tbsp). You should seriously consider researching more about RS. Kresser has started treating his SIBO patients with RS (and other prebiotics) and claims to already be having very good results if he starts them low and slow.

[Benko]

" find that he is a bit too shameless with his product placement, but I can forgive him for that"

Agreed.  There was some e-mail trying to sell you a recording of a  several day seminar he gave and there was a link where you could watch parts of it for free.  Hearing him talk, he does not come off as a slick sales guy.