some reading on glyconutrients

http://www.glycoscience.com/glycoscience/home.wm

more reading on glyconutrients

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2003/3/prweb58824.htm

Interestingly enough, cavemen did die young - from harsh climates and run ins with big nasty creatures, their remains have proven that they had healthy strong bones and very few rotten teeth.

Eqyptians, on the other hand, ate a low fat / high carb diet and were, as you so kindly pointed out, riddled with arthritis, diabetes, arterial plaque and most had lost all their teeth.

If you want to talk cavemen, you have to go alot farther back than 2,000 years. They are refering to 10s of thousands or even millions of years ago, before the advent of agriculture and domestication. Granted, people lived shorter lives back then...But, they also didn't have: Antibiotics, Antiviral Medicines, and most other medicines available to modern humans. Take away modern medicine and and the average lifespan would probably drop significantly.

Add to that, that many were killed by animal attacks, they had little protection from the environment, and that there was constant war. Of course, their lifespan was short. If we jump ahead to the last 5,000-2,000 years...we can see the true effects of a Hi-Carb/Low-Fat diet. Egyptians were especially fond of bread. Egyptians mummies as you stated were found with Tooth Decay, Diabetes, Clogged Arteries, etc...

gymeejet, you keep saying that you are "results oriented" and you rely on your own experience to determine the truth. OK, if you're so interested in finding the truth, do induction. After all, it's only two weeks. After induction, gradually add a few carbs back in . Follow the diet Atkins recommends. Then come back here and tell us that you were incapable of anaerobic exercise after a few weeks. Otherwise, what you say is bunk according to your own logic: you haven't tried Atkins so you can't say whether it works.

It's just nonsense to say "the body works best on THIS ONE type of diet." Human beings would never have been able to survive in so many different climates if they weren't able to adapt to a variety of different diets. The Inuit have no heart disease on their traditional diet.

Fact is, refined carbohydrates are deadly to most Americans who struggle with their weight. This is what every single person who has ever been in Overeaters Anonymous will tell you. They don't go to OA because they have diabetes: they go because they are addicted to sugar, white flour, white rice, potatoes, etc. Those foods trigger cravings in them just like alcohol triggers an alcoholic. Once they eat just one bite of bread, they are bingeing their brains out. This happens, sadly, to many overweight people who just don't understand that carbs are killing them.

Million and millions of people in developed countries will die premature and painful deaths because of obesity. Because of the "low fat" gospel, they don't understand that it's the carbs that are keeping them fat.

For folks like you, who have no trouble with their weight - carbs may be fine. But for those of us who've been enslaved to the carb-insulin-fat storing cycle that was sending us to an early grave, Atkins is a life saver.

>>"it is not the proper diet to bring optimum health to healthy people."

You keep saying this over and over again. What will it take for us to convince you that it simply isn't correct? That there *isn't* one optimal diet? That optimal to one person would be terrible for the next?

I started LCing at the recommendation of other women having glucose problems and weight gain from taking a medication (which I had recently stopped.) Technically, I was "healthy", I just wanted to get myself back to normal. The weight is long gone, so I now eat at a maintenance level of anywhere from 30-100 g carbs a day. Why did I bother sticking around? Lemme tell you why: my cholesterol profile improved, my depression packed its bags and left, my acne is almost completely gone, my messed-up hormones straightened themselves out, I need less sleep, and I have plenty of energy all day, no more afternoon slumps. I feel like a million bucks. This is "sub-optimal?" I don't think so. "Sub-optimal" is what happens when I let the carbs creep back in. All of those benefits I listed disappear.

So if your way is THE optimal way, then please entertain us with an explanation of why I (and hundreds of people on this forum) have the opposite experience.

hi raz,
i wouldn't disagree with what you are saying, from a scientific viewpoint. and i was of average health, i probably would have done so, already. but i have managed to retain my youthful energy at 48, so i ain't gonna fix something that ain't broke - LOL.

refined carbs are bad for all people - i have championed this, since way before low carb diets were around, so no disagreement there.

hi kristine,
just how many forum moderators are there ? i better put on some protective gear !! LOL.

this is one reason that i mentioned to lisa about starting an experiment with people, before they had time to allow the standard american diet to play havoc with their systems.

while you guys may get 3 times the amount of fat that i do, i would wager that i get double the essential fats that you guys do. animal fat has almost no essential fats - mostly all saturated.

take a young person, who is still very healthy. my belief has not been altered. meet his protein requirements, and then do some amino supplementation, give him extremely ample amounts of omega 6 and omega 3, then the rest in wide variety of produce and grains.

it is still my belief that this diet would be best for the overwhelming masses.

of course, exercise is also a must, as well as proper sleep, etc.

but when you have people smoking, drinking, eating tons of processed foods, and reeking all kinds of havoc on their system, some perhaps permanent, it can change what they must do, in order to stay as healthy as possible.

for as scientific as you guys claim you are, not a one of you has even been curious enough to ask about the nutritional tests that i take. the first time i heard about them, i was jumping out of my socks to see how i could get them taken. no matter how much i read, there was nothing like getting exact numbers as to just how one's body was doing.

i found my levels of 40 different amino acids, 40 different fatty acids, 12 minerals in the blood cells, as well as 5 potentially toxic minerals, a vitamin profile, and a whole slew of other nutrients, close to 200, altogether.

i would make some changes, re-do my tests, and see what was actually occurring - no guesswork, no studies - you could not do it any more scientific than that, for your own body.

there are many diets that will keep people alive, and some variations, depending on climate. but i am not sold on this complete variability of diet that most of you guys believe in.

but then i am not a multi-millionaire, attempting to make millions on what i say, so i have no ability to fund such a study. perhaps one day, some one will - PROTEIN, ESSENTIAL FATS, FRESH PRODUCE WITH ALL OF ITS PHYTONUTRIENTS.

Maybe we agree with each other almost completely?

I don't think anyone here in this forum thinks that everyone should do Atkins or similar -- just that it works for us. So we're not trying to take your carbs away from you.

And you're willing to accept the idea that some folks whose metabolisms are messed up should avoid refined carbs.

You don't seem to agree that they should avoid MOST carbs --during induction. But we can agree to disagree about induction -- it's just two weeks, ok?

As for phytonutrients, Omega 3 and 6 fatty acids -- ATKINS ADVOCATES A DIET RICH IN THESE! Dude, read the book!! It's full of flaxseed, olive oil, sesame oil, nuts of all kinds, salmon, tuna, and fresh vegetables -- and some fruits, too, for the later stages.

You seem to think induction is all we do, or that meat & eggs are all we eat. Nothing could be further from the truth. Many on this diet say that they eat MORE veggies on Atkins than they did before. The reason is: you actually find you CRAVE green vegetables on this diet -- or at least I find that's true for me.

with regards to people from tens of thousands or millions of years ago, i am not sold that anyone is exactly sure just what they ate, or how healthy they were. there is tons of anecdotal evidence that both sides (meat, vegetarian) claim.

it is my belief that man would eat whatever he could, more than likely. he was not gonna risk taking down wild animals, if at all possible, because his tools would put him in extreme danger.

in modern climates, where i live, fruit grows year round. i personally grow fruit that ripens from fall through winter, and then eat the more typical fruits during the summer season.

in colder climates, they would have natural freezers to store picked produce. so i suspect they ate vegetation year round, and smaller animals when they could catch them. and in fact, if i recall correctly, salt was used to help preserve meat as well. you gotta figure there were not as many animals running around during the winter, and it would not have been as conducive for man to go chasing after them, even if they were around.

so i suspect that there was a lot more preservation of foods than i think is normally regarded as being so. in any case, i am not sure that it plays a large role in the decision-making process of our nutritional needs today, other than they did not have supermarkets with manufactured foods to mess up their bodies.

raz,
i have always been willing to admit that your diet was better than the standard. i do believe that you eat too much saturated fat, and not enough carbs. however, you do get enough protein and good fats.

i don't consider most of what people eat, as food; so when i use the term carbs, it is short for fresh produce and whole grain products, not twinkies - LOL.

gymeejet,

1. have you read the book?

2. why do you think saturated fats are bad?

My husband and I are vegetarians who avoided cheese and butter (except when eating out occasionally) and we ate almost NO saturated fat prior to my doing Atkins.

He's still on a low-fat diet -- and recently, his cholesterol tested as extremely high. (He's also a fanatical runner with a 10k pace of 6:42.)

I, by contrast, am eating more cholesterol than ever before in my whole life. I have never had high cholesterol, but recently had mine tested -- and it's gone DOWN 8 points since I started doing the diet. (I exercise -- but only moderately.) My doctor couldn't believe it when I told him wht I'd been eating in the months prior to having my cholesterol checked.

I think you meant to specify "meat" since some of the best sources of EPA and DHA are cold-water fish, including salmon, trout, sardines, mackerel and cod - unless we can't agree that fish are animals.

Including more Omega 6, I'll bet. No, thank you. Eating a 'standard' diet has unbalanced our ratio of omega 3 to 6 dramatically - so much so that it's responsible for a host of illnesses. Where do you find O6? In safflower, olive, almond, sunflower, hemp, soybean, walnut, pumpkin, sesame, and flaxseed oils.

This is an amazing field of study that you must have not heard of - archeology (defined by webster as the scientific study of material remains [as fossil relics, artifacts, and monuments] of past human life and activities).

Twinkies aren't carbs, they are carbs and fat. Perhaps you should provide us with a list of gymeejet standard definitions so we are not so easily confused in the future

-Nat

hi raz,

http://www.sdearthtimes.com/et0598/et0598s12.html

i just believe that too much saturated fat clogs up your arteries. and if there is not enough essential fats, one's cellular membranes become too stiff, and non-permeable, thereby making it harder for nutrients to both ingress and egress from the cellular walls, and the organelle's walls.

in my viewpoint, i am not advocating a low-fat diet, as i was on that for a long time, and know that my body does indeed need the essentials. if your hubby wants to continue on that type of diet, perhaps he can do what i am doing, to make sure he has enough of the essentials.

i first started fixing my fats by adding fish and flax oils. my omega3 tests were coming out on the high side, but my omega6 was extremely low. it was when i added the omega6 that i really saw most of my results.

i will repeat one thing - most omega6 that people get in their diets has been heated and processed, so it is really not an essential fat any more. i do not believe that omega6 is to blame, but rather the type of omega6 that we are eating.

i make sure that people do not heat, cook, or anything to the safflower oil, or flax meal, as the polunsaturates are highly suspect, when heat or light hits them.