Dieting Living

For most of us, the jump from meat-eater to vegetarian is a big one. For the giant panda, the switch was all too easy. Despite a long family history of meat-heavy meals, this large bear now feeds almost exclusively on tough bamboo – a change its ancestors made more than 2 million years ago.

For that reason, by all appearances, the giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) is a herbivore. But escaping your roots has never been easy, and from one dietary perspective this black-and-white bear remains just as much a carnivore as many of its relatives.

Even though the giant panda has long-eschewed all meat, new research suggests that it continues to eat like a wolf (quite literally).

After years of tracking the animal's eating habits, scientists have now revealed that its favourite bamboo shoots are basically a kind of faux meat, given they're absolutely brimming with protein.

And pandas know it. Over the years, the researchers watched as these creatures climbed to ever greater heights, following the young shoots with low fibre content and high protein.

With half the panda's energy coming from protein alone, the researchers conclude that the bear's diet is less like a herbivore and more like a hyper-carnivore, similar to a feral cat or wolf. In fact, it's left the team wondering if the term 'herbivore' can even fully capture the true quirkiness of this giant mammal's diet.

"Based on what they eat, they absolutely belong to the herbivores, but considering the macronutrient composition of the ingested and absorbed diets, they belong to the carnivores," says researcher Fuwen Wei from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

Perhaps the giant panda is doomed to forever sit on this categorical fence. Over millions of years of evolution, the bear developed jaws, teeth and thumbs ideal for handling bamboo, but deep inside it holds a bloodthirsty secret that has largely gone unnoticed.

Unlike a herbivore, its digestive tract is short and unsuited to fibre digestion, while the enzymes and microbes in its gut speak volumes of its Carnivora clade. Both the panda's milk and poo were also found to contain high levels of protein, with the milk especially reminiscent of what carnivores suckle, in terms of its macronutrient makeup.

"In giant pandas, a short, carnivorous gut facilitates rapid throughput, and the high abundance and easy accessibility of bamboo enable large amounts to be eaten, compensating for low digestive efficiency," the authors explain.

In short, the findings suggest that giant pandas had to undergo few evolutionary adaptations to make the switch from meat to bamboo. There, sitting in front of them, was a seemingly endless source of protein-rich food that had everything they needed. All they had to do was eat a lot of it.

"If you're going to switch to a specific plant, bamboo isn't too bad, as it does have respectable plant protein levels, as well as a swathe of different vitamins," bacteriologist Garret Suen from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who wasn't involved with the study, told The Atlantic.

Far from being an abrupt or extreme leap, as many have assumed, the argument for vegetarianism might have been easy for the giant panda to swallow.

This study has been published in Current Biology.

What is Ketogains?

An Evidence based Approach Towards Optimal Body Recomposition

Education - Empowerment - Achievement

www.Ketogains.com

“A community driven exploration into the pursuit of physical excellence via ketosis. Whether you want to GAIN health, endurance, strength, speed, muscle or a lean body, it can all be done with a well-formulated, ketogenic diet.”

On Ketogains, we will teach you how to achieve an optimal body recomposition by following a program that involves a diet of whole, mostly unprocessed foods: low on sugars, adequate on proteins, and adequate on healthy fats.

Ketosis is a nice and healthy SIDE EFFECT of our general macro and micro recommendations: NOT THE GOAL in itself.

All advice here, comes mainly from respected scientific and sport / nutrition sources (Jeff Volek, Steven Phinney, Peter Attia, Lyle McDonald, Menno Henselmans, Ted Naiman, Robb Wolf, Mark Sisson, Bill Lagakos, - in no particular order-, et al.) and adapted toward our athletic endeavors.

Our Mission: To help people attain their fitness & health goals. To Change lives through education and empowerment.

Our Vision: To become one of the most respected and trusted health / nutrition / fitness brands – Always follow the evidence and science.

KETOGAINS:

We don’t chase ketones- We chase results.

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KETOGAINS FAQ HERE
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2015-06-26

When I was 15-years-old, I took off my clothes and looked in the mirror. When I stared at myself naked, I realized that to be perfectly proportioned I would need twenty-inch arms to match the rest of me. -Arnold Schwarzenegger

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• RULE 2: The FAQ, read it.

• RULE 3: Before asking a question, use the search function to see if the topic has already been discussed.

• RULE 4: All progress pictures must be accompanied by information relevant to ketogains - e.g. macros, workouts.

• Many posts will be anecdotal but we strive for a scientific foundation - please provide research and articles when able.

• Conflicts of opinion are going to happen. If an approach gets results, respect it.

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KETOGAINS FAQ HERE
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[PICS] Let the sub see your brogress.

[QN] Got a question? Be sure you have already looked in the FAQ.

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[NOOB] If you're a complete noob, use this tag to help people help you helpfully. If you haven't read the FAQ first, expect to be pimp-slapped.

Two excerpts:

In guidelines released Tuesday, WHO issued its first recommendations to reduce the risk of dementia globally. They include regular physical exercise, not using tobacco, drinking less alcohol, maintaining healthy blood pressure and eating a healthy diet—particularly a Mediterranean one.

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“The Mediterranean diet is the most extensively studied dietary approach, in general as well as in relation to cognitive function,” the report said. “Several systematic reviews of observational studies have concluded that high adherence to the Mediterranean diet is associated with decreased risk of mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s Disease, but modest adherence is not.”

Source: New global guidelines to reduce risk of dementia released

Steve Parker, M.D.

Click the pic to purchase at Amazon.com in the U.S.

Yesterday I lay in the sun for a while... and I pulled me tankini up to get some sun on me belly.

Whoops.  Wrong move.
Me poor belly is rather pink today, and a bit sore.  I'd show ya, but well... it's not a pretty sight, trust me!

So, no more sunbathing for now.

Well... the weather is supposed to be wet on and off for the next week at least, so chances are I wouldn't be out in the sun anyway!

It will be a shame if it's raining on Christmas Day... but not uncommon around here.

Source: https://diet-coke-rocks.blogspot.com/2018/12/just-bit-sore.html

Desiree Hunt has come a long way in the past few years.  At 25 years old, she was 275 lbs and wore size 22 jeans. After an incredible weight loss journey, she's now a size 6 and looking better than ever.

On Instagram and at the gym, she's inspiring others to undergo their own transformations. If anything, she's proven that such amazing results are impossible without perseverance and hard work. In fact, she was able to achieve it all with no special diet, no program, no pills, no special foods, and no trainer.

Die Erler Klagsflut – Zwischenstand

Aufgrund meiner Berichte und Dokumentationen über die Zustände bei den Tiroler Festspielen in Erl haben Kuhn & Co. zwölf Klagen gegen mich eingebracht. Acht davon, alle zivilrechtlich, sind noch anhängig, drei von Hans Peter Haselsteiner, drei von Gustav Kuhn und je eine von der Tiroler Festspiele Erl Betriebsges.m.b.H. und von Michael Krüger, der zugleich alle Genannten anwaltlich vertritt.

Haselsteiner I:

Klage auf Unterlassung wegen zweier Postings im dietiwag.org-Forum
Aktenzahl: 15 Cg 39/18i
Streitwert: EUR 100.000

Haselsteiner II:

Klage, lautend auf Kreditschädigung, weil ich das Forum geschlossen habe und Haselsteiner mir vorwirft, ich unterstellte ihm, diese Schließung erzwungen zu haben. Auch beanstandet er, dass ich durch Veröffentlichung seiner E-Mail-Adresse gegen das Datenschutzgesetz verstoßen hätte.
Aktenzahl: 6 Cg 49/18v
Streitwert: EUR 39.240

Haselsteiner III:

Mahnklage, weil ich ein Bild nicht gelöscht habe, das Haselsteiner bei der Verleihung des Ehrenzeichens des Landes Tirol durch Landeshauptmann Günther Platter 2012 zeigt.
Aktenzahl: 69 Cg 58/18f
Zahlungsbefehl: 15.000 Euro Sofortstrafe

Kuhn I:

Klage auf Unterlassung und Widerruf wegen des Vorwurfs „sexueller Übergriffe“ (zwei inhaltlich ähnliche Klagen nach dem Mediengesetz hat Kuhn nach zwei Zeuginnen-Aussagen zurückgezogen; Entschädigungsbegehren damals: EUR 50.000 und EUR 50.000); hier gab es am 8. Juni einen ersten kurzen Prozesstermin, bei welchem auf unbestimmte Zeit vertagt wurde.
Aktenzahl: 69 Cg 22/18m
Streitwert: EUR 60.000

Kuhn II:

Präventivklage (wegen Tatbegehungsgefahr) in einer Sache, über die ich noch keine einzige Zeile geschrieben, sondern zu der ich nur Gustav Kuhn um ein redaktionelles Gespräch gebeten habe. Die Forderung nach Einstweiliger Verfügung wurde vom Gericht abgewiesen, jene nach Unterlassung ist aufrecht.
Aktenzahl: 69 Cg 60/18z
Streitwert: EUR 69.620

Kuhn III:

Klage auf Unterlassung wegen des von mir angesprochenen, „im Raum stehenden Verdachts“ arbeitsrechtlicher Mängel in Erl; hier ermitteln zwischenzeitlich Arbeitsinspektorat, Gewerbepolizei und Finanzpolizei.
Aktenzahl: 69 Cg 64/18p
Streitwert: EUR 70.000

Gustav Kuhn mit Begleitschutz bei der Verhandlung am 8. Juni 2018

Festspiele Erl Betriebsges.m.b.H.

Klage auf Unterlassung und Widerruf (ähnlich wie oben) wegen des von mir angesprochenen, „im Raum stehenden Verdachts“ arbeitsrechtlicher Mängel in Erl; hier ermitteln zwischenzeitlich Arbeitsinspektorat, Gewerbepolizei und Finanzpolizei.
Aktenzahl: 10 Cg 55/18f
Streitwert: EUR 19.620

Krüger:

Klage wegen einer von Krüger selbst verlangten, aber seiner Meinung nach nicht korrekt erfolgten „Gegendarstellung“ im Forum dietiwag.org. In der ersten Instanz hat das Landesgericht Innsbruck am 16.5.2018 gegen Krüger entschieden, der jedoch in Berufung gegangen ist.
Aktenzahl: 6 Bs 166/18i
Forderung: Kostenersatz

Wer mir in diesem Zusammenhang etwas mitteilen möchte, kann dies unter [email protected] tun oder auch anonym hier eine Information hinterlassen:

25.7.2018

Copper!

Copper is needed to prevent anemia, histamine intolerance, high cholesterol, and osteoporosis, probably helps with allergies, and is needed to make you feel good overall. There’s a dark side to its toxicity, but more likely you need more copper than less.

Tune in for everything you need to know about how to manage your copper status!

This episode is brought to you by Ancestral Supplements. Our Native American ancestors believed that eating the organs from a healthy animal would support the health of the corresponding organ of the individual. Ancestral Supplements has a nose-to-tail product line of grass-fed liver, organs, bone marrow and more… in the convenience of a capsule. For more information or to buy any of their products, go to https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/ancestral

This episode is brought to you by Testing Nutritional Status: The Ultimate Cheat Sheet. Everything you could ever need to know to optimize your nutrition, all in one place. Easier to find and use than ever before. Get your copy at https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/cheatsheet Use the code LITE5 to get $5 off.

These links are mentioned in the episode:

Zinc for heavy metals: https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/2018/11/01/zinc-heavy-metals/

The methylation page: https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/methylation

Here’s a much more detailed page about copper: https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/2017/02/03/manage-copper-status/

This episode is brought to you by Ancestral Supplements. Our Native American ancestors believed that eating the organs from a healthy animal would support the health of the corresponding organ of the individual. Ancestral Supplements has a nose-to-tail product line of grass-fed liver, organs, bone marrow and more… in the convenience of a capsule. For more information or to buy any of their products, go to https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/ancestral

This episode is brought to you by Testing Nutritional Status: The Ultimate Cheat Sheet. Everything you could ever need to know to optimize your nutrition, all in one place. Easier to find and use than ever before. Get your copy at https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/cheatsheet Use the code LITE5 to get $5 off.

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For everything from anemia, to headaches, to allergies, to having healthy bones, and just feeling great all the time, copper is an incredibly important nutrient. And this is how to know if you’re getting enough.

Hi. I’m Dr. Chris Masterjohn of chrismasterjohnphd.com. And this is Chris Masterjohn Lite, where the name of the game is “Details? Shmeetails. Just tell me what works!”

And today we’re going to talk about how to manage your copper status, make sure that you get enough, not too much, and fix any problems and make sure that whatever your solutions are, they’re working.

So copper, when you do not have enough, you can get anemia that looks just like iron deficiency anemia but isn’t, or that looks just like B12 and folate deficiency anemia but isn’t. In fact, you can get malabsorption of iron from copper deficiency that actually causes iron deficiency, and the problem might not be that you don’t have enough iron in your diet, it might be that you’re not getting enough copper in your diet to absorb the iron, so you could have anemia from that as well as the many other problems of iron deficiency itself.

You can have low white blood cells, especially neutrophils. You can have high cholesterol, you could get osteoporosis because copper is needed to support your bones. You could get histamine intolerance or a greater burden of allergies than you would otherwise have. You could have poor pigmentation of your skin and hair, and neurotransmitter imbalances, like low adrenaline or high serotonin, that might leave you feeling like you’re not your best. So what do you do about this? Well, the first thing is look at your diet and see whether the dietary pattern that you have is supporting getting enough copper.

The absolute best sources of copper are liver, oysters, shiitake mushrooms, pure chocolate, not the stuff watered down with sugar and milk, and spirulina.

A tier below that of very good sources of copper are most shellfish besides oysters, remember oysters are the best, whole grains, legumes, and potatoes. Diets that are low in these foods are likely to contribute to a copper deficiency, but soil variation is very large, and all these foods, if they’re grown in low-copper soil, could be much less likely to give you enough copper.

And if you’re consuming—if you’re not consuming enough of those foods and you are consuming foods from copper-deficient soils, then that makes you very predisposed to copper deficiency. Zinc supplementation, especially over 45 milligrams a day and with a zinc-to-copper ratio greater than 15-to-1, can be a cause of copper deficiency. Impaired methylation can be a cause of copper deficiency, and I’ll link in the description of this episode to my methylation resources.

Other sources of copper deficiency that are not dietary in nature include the use of antacids, proton pump inhibitors, gastric bypass surgery, and any digestive problems that are focused on the upper part of the GI tract, like the stomach and the upper part of the small intestine. And although there’s limited evidence for this, it seems to be the case that high doses of vitamin C can impair copper absorption. On the other hand, there is copper toxicity.

In general, from diet I do not believe copper toxicity is a concern. If you are supplementing with copper over 10 milligrams, that could pose a potential risk of copper toxicity. I think it’s best to keep copper supplements under 10 milligrams, preferably under 3 milligrams a day, and it’s always best to get your copper from food, and when you do, you’re benefitting by the fact that the copper is mixed with other minerals, especially zinc, which protects against copper toxicity. So it’s extremely unlikely to get copper toxicity from food.

There are high copper levels in certain water systems, but when they get to the point where they can cause copper toxicity, usually drinking that water is going to make you nauseated, and it’s usually leaving blue colors all over the place. If it’s really bad, you can see the blue even coming out in your clothing. And so usually you have a warning sign, and certainly using a water filter will generally protect you against too much copper coming from your water supply.

The most important test of copper status is serum copper. This can be supplemented with serum ceruloplasmin. They tend to go together, and so you’re usually not getting additional information by combining them. And serum copper tends to be more sensitive to deficiency, so you always want to at least get serum copper, but it can be helpful to corroborate it with serum ceruloplasmin. But always get serum copper. Give that the priority.

In general, low serum copper and low serum ceruloplasmin indicate a copper deficiency most of the time. From what I’ve seen, I think you want to tend to be in the middle of the range because I have seen indications of copper deficiency when people are in the lower 20 or 30 percent of the range.

It’s important to note a couple of limitations to these tests. First of all, estrogen increases serum ceruloplasmin and tends to increase serum copper as well, and that means that there’s going to be some fluctuation of copper levels with the menstrual cycle. And copper levels are generally twice as high during pregnancy as they are for women who are not pregnant.

And using hormone replacement therapy, estrogen in HRT can raise copper levels by 30 to 90 percent. And unfortunately, there really isn’t any clear research to develop a separate reference range for women experiencing high estrogen under these conditions, so what we can say is that if your copper levels are running a little high and you can explain it with estrogen, you can probably dismiss it because it’s normal. It’s probably all the more true in women than in men that you want to be at least towards the middle of the range for copper because if you’re at the low end of the range, and that might be close to deficiency, that’s all the more true if you would expect your estrogen levels to be bringing the copper up higher.

There are two genetic disorders of copper metabolism: Menkes disease and Wilson’s disease. Both of these can look like copper deficiency because the serum copper levels and ceruloplasmin levels can be low, but you can have copper overload in certain specific tissues, and which tissues those are is different for Menkes disease and Wilson’s disease. But measuring urine copper can be very useful in identifying these diseases because usually the urine copper is elevated in those diseases despite the low serum levels.

So, those are the rare caveats to serum copper being the most useful test, but urine copper can often distinguish those diseases from the typical picture. If you identify a copper deficiency, the best thing to do is to solve it at the root of the problem. In some cases, that might be due to an absorption problem, and it might be due to excessive supplementation of zinc or high doses of vitamin C. If so, you want to work on removing those problems. If the problem is a dietary one because you’re not consuming enough copper-rich foods, then the overwhelmingly best thing to do is to work the copper-rich foods into your diet. Again, those are liver, oysters, shiitake mushrooms, chocolate, and spirulina as the very top foods. And the other good sources include most non-oyster shellfish, whole grains, legumes, and potatoes. So eat more of those foods.

This is especially important because although there’s not a ton of evidence around it, the copper that you get from foods is a different form than what you get in supplements. Usually the—to be technical about it, the oxidation state is different. And it appears to be the case that the food copper is the ideal form that is utilized much more effectively, and that means that you’re always going to get a better deal from getting copper in foods than you are from supplements.

With that said, there are case reports out there making it very clear that 7 milligrams of copper from a supplement over the course of a few months is highly effective at curing the anemia or the low white blood cells that occur in copper deficiency. And so certainly, if you cannot get your copper levels up with food, supplements are an effective means of fixing the deficiency.

True copper toxicity is very unlikely outside of extreme over-supplementation, or consuming highly polluted waters, or the genetic diseases that, Menkes and Wilson’s disease that can lead to copper toxicity in certain tissues.

In the case of true copper toxicity, working with a health care practitioner through chelation therapy is the necessary course of action. In most cases, if you have a reason to suspect a mild overload of copper from overuse of supplements in the past, I think the best thing to do is to use zinc supplementation to get your zinc levels up along the lines of how I described doing so for toxic heavy metals, and I’ll link to that episode in the description of this one.