In today's Arrow we take a look at Low Carb Sydney, a bit more on the Constitution, a look at low-carb, thermodynamics, and mass balance. From there we go on to a great video by David Diamond, then to Carbosis, followed by a warning on semaglutide, more Fauci treachery, and a good laugh at Justin Trudeau. The video of the week finishes it off. Enjoy.
I'm sorry to say I'm disappointed by your beginning section on the Constitution, expecting Scalia to perhaps explain why those countries who copied our Constitution didn't have the same success. Instead he seems to say that countries who copied our Bill of Rights without the constitutional divisions of power between the legislature and the executive, and within the legislature itself, were not successful. As much as I like Scalia, a contrary argument was made by Henry Hazlitt in his 1942 book "A New Constitution Now". Hazlitt argues that the division of power between House and Senate and between Congress and the Presidency means that bad results can be explained away by blaming the other party's control of one of those other branches of government. He argues that the parliamentary system is better because a concentration of power means a concentration of responsibility. And since a vote of No Confidence forces an election, an unpopular government can be replace quickly rather than waiting several years as under our system.
But I disagree with both Scalia and Hazlitt that either form would or will save us now. Any system over time can be gamed by those who take advantage of its weaknesses, and this becomes more prevalent as people's solidarity diminishes. It is harder to take advantage of people like yourself than it is people that are different in some fundamental way. So a common sense of who we are, of our character and values, a benevolence towards our fellow citizens, seems essential. That is largely gone now.
Our President has repeatedly declared me and people like me as enemies of democracy, and his party supports that declaration. It is common now that ones political affiliation will determine not only the likelihood and severity of punishment for a crime, but also the sense of justice or injustice felt by half of the population. This is not sustainable.
We are suffering under the delusion that our continued success and progress was somehow preordained, and that we can abuse what we all inherited without any lasting bad effect. Like the human body our nation has great resiliency, but there are limits to what injury we can suffer and still recover our health and strength.
I'm a big fan of Hazlitt. He led me to Bastiat, after all. But I'm not sure I agree with him on this one. It may well be a "marry in haste, repent at leisure" kind of deal if things can be changed too quickly, though, God knows, I would like to change things now. I'll have to get the Hazlitt book and put it in my stack.
I pretty much agree with everything else you wrote, though I don't think it's too late. I hope I'm not wrong.
Yes, Hazlitt through his book "Economics in One Lesson", also lead me to Bastiat. His lesson of "looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy" is broadly applicable beyond economics.
I hope I am wrong, but this next year and a half will reveal whether that's the case. (The outcome of the war in Ukraine and the Presidential election.)
We don't live in a democracy. We live in a Republic. Democracy is only a part of our political framework along with courts, states, and an armed populace.
Yes, a constitutional republic, to be precise. I get tired to death of everyone yammering about how our democracy is in danger. A lynch mob is a democracy.
A dismissal based on labelling a person a "very bad word?"
Kinda like saying "looks like a racist's take...?"
... Anyway, Spooner is quite a figure in early America. Not popular in the popular sense, because as a lawyer, his arguments are razor sharp and consistent and because of that, people experience HUGE cognitive dissonance when reading him. It's profound, I have observed it for 3 decades online.
His first claim to fame is that as a lawyer, he successfully argued against laws requiring licensing to practice law. The Massachusetts Legislature agreed with him in 1836 and abolished the restriction. Kinda like selling ice to Eskimos, there.
Second fame is that he successfully out-competed the US Postal Service, so much so that the feds put him out of business.
"Being an advocate of self-employment and opponent of government regulation of business, in 1844 Spooner started the American Letter Mail Company, which competed with the United States Post Office, whose rates were very high. It had offices in various cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York City. Stamps could be purchased and then attached to letters, which could be brought to any of its offices. From here, agents were dispatched who traveled on railroads and steamboats and carried the letters in handbags. Letters were transferred to messengers in the cities along the routes, who then delivered the letters to the addressees. This was a challenge to the Post Office's legal monopoly.
"As he had done when challenging the rules of the Massachusetts Bar Association, Spooner published a pamphlet titled "The Unconstitutionality of the Laws of Congress Prohibiting Private Mails". Although Spooner had finally found commercial success with his mail company, legal challenges by the government eventually exhausted his financial resources. A law enacted in 1851 that strengthened the federal government's monopoly finally put him out of business. The legacy of Spooner's challenge to the postal service was the reduction in letter postage from 5¢ to 3¢, in response to the competition his company provided which lasted until late 1950's or early 1960's."
3rd fame, and what he's best known for, is his abolitionism.
I was familiar with Spooner who was introduced to me by an anarchist/libertarian girlfriend 35 or 40 years ago, but I didn't find him persuasive. If I remember correctly the premise was essentially that you can't have any obligations that you haven't agreed to, which once I agreed with, but no longer do.
Also would like to hear how you liked living in Chiang Mai. I am interested in retiring to SE Asia but don't know how I will handle the humid heat. I understand that Chiang Mai is in the hill country and much more temperate. Is that what you've found? Also PonyTailGuy is Peter Zeihan, whose views on China and Russia seem nonsensical to me. I also don't understand why his views are sought after.
I don't consider food and water (or air or warmth) to be obligations. They are more accurately called requirements for our individual survival. Obligations are social, moral or institutional duties or responsibilities that arise from our existing as human beings and part of a social civilization. Obviously such obligations can be ignored or not performed, but nonfeasance doesn't change the existence of these obligations. If you ask what these obligations are I would say I don't know or at least I'm not prepared to argue them in detail. But I have a clear sense that our civilization has requirements for its existence and continuation. I also think that without civilization human beings could not long exist. In the same way that our existence as an individual requires us to fulfill certain requirements (food, water, air, warmth) so our existence as members of a social species requires certain things from us.
Excellent observation! Yes, the unequal handling of "justice" is precisely what is causing so much grief for society. Perhaps the Department of Justice should be run by a bipartisan consortium of elected representatives of the people rather than one corrupt appointee.
The rice diet people—they lost weight and so “ate” lots of fat and no doubt muscle as well. Once they lost the weight, they couldn’t survive on just rice. Same as how Penn Gillette lost weight in the potato diet.
Thanks for the coverage and the happy-making sudden appearance of so many new subscribers. An advertising point for your readers is that if they become paid subscribers to Nutrition in Crisis ($ 6/month; $60/year) they get a signed, personalized copy of Nutrition in Crisis in addition to other premiums still to be determined.
On mass and energy balance, there are many issues. I will quickly describe a couple here and do more detailed comments later.
First what was distinctly wrong. You wrote:
"Let’s just look at one example to keep from getting way too far into the thermodynamic weeds on this. The energy content of protein is 4 kcal per gram. That 4 kcal per gram is in the bonds between the various atoms that make up the amino acids that make the protein."
This is not correct. The 4 kcal/g does not refer to the energy content of the protein or its chemical bonds. Insofar as we can talk about the energy content of a protein (or any chemical compound) it would be the energy of formation of the protein from it constituent elements. This is clearly complicated theoretically and a difficult experimental parameter to measure. The heat of formation of an amino acid from its elements is in the range of 400 - 600 kJoules/mole. (1 kJ = 0.239 kcal)
"When these bonds are broken, the energy is released for the body to use to create other bonds to make other molecules."
This is not correct. The 4 kcal/g represents the free energy of combustion by molecular oxygen. If you do anything else, like take two amino acids and combine them you have to put in energy, you have to find a way to provide a little under 4 kcal/g (usually from another chemical reaction). Of course, in thermodynamics, all of these can be calculated from each other, but we have to be precise about context.
For example, ATP is not a high energy molecule. It does not even have high energy bonds. We talk that way colloquially because we understand that the hydrolysis of ATP to ADP or of ADP to AMP has a free energy of -7.3 kcal/mole. If you do anything else, convert ADP to deoxy-ADP for DNA, or any reactions involving the ring, all bets are off.
This means you can’t go back and forth between mass and energy. So it is important to not lose sight of what we want to know. As I mentioned originally, the reacting species are not characterized by their mass but by their chemistry. And this bears on the obvious question of the identity of what the reactions are. You are trying to control fat, not mass.
Second, thermodynamics demands that you pay attention to simple concepts like system and environment. In a calorimeter, if you consider the calorimeter and its contents to be the system and the universe to be the environment, nothing happens. When we do the experiment, we ask about the system (the food and the oxygen). Energy is not conserved. It is given off to the environment. The kind of analysis is needed to decide when energy balance is a tautology.
You wrote: "This is not correct. The 4 kcal/g represents the free energy of combustion by molecular oxygen." I'll buy that. I was just trying to explain it in an understandable way for the layman. But it is further proof that the CICO theory is bunk, because it is predicated on the glucose bonds containing 4 kcal of energy. At least since the days of Atwater.
My point still is that it would be better to use mass balance than energy balance in research. It's much easier and more accurate to weigh than to estimate energy expenditure.
I disagree. Mass balance is not accurate at all because it essentially says that all calories are the same. In that, it is just a different form of CICO. but is the complete opposite of chemistry. Chemistry is about stuff, how compounds taste, feel, interact with hormone receptors, etc. The implication of mass balance is that a pound of carbohydrate is the same as a pound of fat. You and I and our gang spent so much time fighting that.
And, if mass balance were to be used, it would violate the second law. Consider a diet-regimen where you theoretically lose a pound of fat and gain a pound of muscle. Volek has actually done such an experiment (fat lost, muscle gained), not exactly equal, of course, but clear effect. Now these are different types of compounds. Protein is a very low entropy compound — high degree of structure. Fat is a high entropy compound — you can put it in the adipocyte with a spoon. In essence, you’ve converted a high entropy compound into a low entropy compound with no net change in mass. That’s a violation of the second law — you can’t do that. If you do it, it’s got to cost you energy.
To some extent, this is all like the old joke about how physicists see things. Condensing a long joke: computer scientist, biochemist and physicist go to the race track. Computer guy checks all the old data on performance, biochemist runs his hand through horses’ manes, pats horses’ legs, etc. In the end, the physicist picks the winning horse. They ask him how he did it. He says “first, assume that a horse is a perfect sphere…”
The bottom line after all this time: Beginning vs. final balance of energy or mass resides in the reaction, in the mechanism, not in the reactions and products. Equilibrium thermodynamics can’t tell you anything about that. It is controlled by kinetics or non-equilibrium thermodynamics (which includes kinetics). We, of course, rarely know that. The actual balance is an experimental issue. Does it happen or not? CICO does not happen all the time. It is not a theoretical rule. It can happen but we have numerous exceptions. I suggest you and I and our friends collect and publish them.
>>The implication of mass balance is that a pound of carbohydrate is the same as a pound of fat.<<
The pound of carbohydrate represents 8,800 kcal; the pound of fat, 19,800 kcal. If one subject who weighed 140 pounds at the pound of carb while another subject who also weighed 140 pounds at the pound of fat, what would they both weigh ten minutes after consumption (assuming to trips to the bathroom after eating)? If they then fasted for three days, what would they each weigh?
I don't understand the drift of this. We have fundamental agreement on the general problem but the issue is becoming clouded.
As pointed our before, a pound of carb represents 8,800 kcal if and only if, you are talking about complete oxidation. If you do anything else, make glycogen, or more important, make glycogen, then hydrolyze it back to glucose and then re-form glycogen, you don't know the energy. Same for fat. Again, the energy is in the reaction not in the reactant.
You can lose more weight, calorie-for-calorie, or gram-for-gram, on carbohydrate restriction than on other diet regimens. This is an observed fact. We agree on that. You know that better anybody. The question is how does that happen, or, in some cases, can I prove that to those who don't believe their eyes. In both cases, you cannot predict or explain with energy arguments (thermodynamics). You have to explain mechanism. Calories (thermo) or grams (mass action) does not have mechanism.
Mike, since you're hosting an Ask Mike Anything session, we should give you a warm up. In the past week you showed how much less money eating out can be without alcohol, and that you needed to give your liver a rest after returning from Scotland. (We got that loud and clear, eh). And thus the question, how do you know if you're giving your liver a rest? What is work for the liver? Is there much difference between protein, carbs, and fat? Vitamins and minerals? How about acetaminophen, or NSAIDs? How much is nothing significant versus a potential danger? Most of us have a feeling about what alcohol can do, but everyone isn't the same. I wish I could say I looked all of this up ahead of time, but I tried and could not find any easy answers.
You know your liver is getting a rest when you don't load it up with toxic ingredients. One, just one, of the liver's jobs is to detoxify substances that are toxic. Alcohol is toxic. Caffeine is toxic (it's a bridge too far to ask me to ditch coffee, though). Acetaminophen is really toxic (I wouldn't take it on a dare). NSAIDS are sort of toxic. One's liver has a finite capacity to detox. Plus, it has a lot of other jobs. If it's overloaded with Rx drugs, OTC drugs, caffeine, alcohol, etc., then it may not be able to do some of the other things it needs to do. Such as clear insulin from the blood.
I'm so glad you wrote "Acetaminophen is really toxic (I wouldn't take it on a dare)". I've tried acetaminophen - paracetamol - for pain relief on a few occasions in the past but it always made me feel kind of nauseous. In addition it did absolutely nothing for pain for me.
This Fall may not be the best time to visit Australia. I heard that the Aussie police are now in training to break down doors and forcibly vaccinate unwilling occupants.
I always liked the restaurant/ party explanation "More people came in than left." (I think Gary Taubes used that a few years ago in a talk.) But when it comes to food and exercise I think it is easy to think that how much we eat is a decision under our control and how much we exercise is also a decision under our control. The alternative seems to suggest that we can't (don't) control how much we eat or how much we exercise.
Gary and I have batted it back and forth a number of times. It's been so long that I can't remember correctly, but I think he told me he was going to remove it from one of his books. I told him not to, and that if he did, I would take it for my own.
As to control... They're both under our control. But in the long term, hunger almost always wins. Which is why the low-carb diet is so nice. You don't have to be hungry.
I wrote a book about CICO, setting about to prove that Calories In - Calories Out HAS TO BE precise, and stupidly wrote the book before the final results were in. Yes, I was that sure of myself. But, the CO was not accurate. Nervous jitters and perhaps more heat radiated when the CI was high, and similarly, my body partly shut down when the CI was low. I found that I could maintain my weight at 1300 kcalories/day up to about 1800 kcalories/day, while superficially maintaining the same level of activity. What an embarrassment. Thankfully, the book didn't sell. So, there's yet another confounder to this theory.
I love zoe and I subscribe to her weekly missive—but I wish she had a Substack because the comment section is so interesting. I’d happily pay. And the same for Malcolm Kendrick btw. (Is he still alive?)
What are your thoughts about ApoB being a better indicator of cardiovascular disease? I stumbled upon this study from one of the commenters in Courtney Luna's YouTube carnivore vlog:
Ask Mike Anything: I would absolutely love it if you attacked the hidden causes behind the hypertension epidemic with same tenacity as you do with the cholesterol-CVD hypothesis (and statins). Are there links to seed oils, potassium or magnesium deficiencies, environmental toxins, lectins/oxalates, etc.? I'm tired of doctors waving their hands, ordering drastic reduction in salt intake and simply prescribing Ca-blockers/ACE-inhibitors. I have to believe that there's more to the renin-angiotensin cascade, but I'm way too ignorant.
As to the ApoB... I always like to think of Panofsky's law, named after Pief Panofsky, founder of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, former presidential science advisor and Manhattan Project physicist. Panofsky said, "if you throw money at an effect and it doesn't get bigger, that means it's not really there."
Those trying to show that somehow blood lipids cause heart disease have gone to great lengths to come up with some sort of connection. They've sliced and diced lipid fractions so that there are as many of them as their are words in Inuit for snow. And yet the connection between lipids and heart disease is tenuous at best. And vastly more than a ton of money has been thrown at research on the subject. (See Panofsky's law above.) About the only lipid that may actually cause coronary artery issues is Lp(a). But Lp(a) isn't reduced by statins, so it's pretty much ignored. What does reduce Lp(a) is dietary saturated fat, but God forbid that we mention that.
There is a lot more to the renin-angiotensin cascade, but that's for another day.
Thanks for your speedy reply, Dr. Eades! Yeah, I figured that ApoB would be the latest "woo-woo" from the lipophobes. I really appreciate your insight and also can't wait for your future posts on the R-A cascade!
Dr Eades, gutted that I won't be able to make Low Carb Sydney as I'll be away travelling in South Australia. Don't know if you've been to AU before but the trip can be pretty draining even in business class; hope you get plenty of time to recover and the opportunity to enjoy the Spring sunshine. All the best for your trip and the conference.
Mike - another good one - especially the info on the Faucsster. Not that anyone should be surprised by that information. Somewhere I read that the military in this country was the one “paying” for those warp speed jabs - which is why they didn’t have to pay attention to things like transmission or not using people with autoimmune problems (or pregnant women) in their “trials”. I might have seen it in Sasha Latypova’s column (she also displays some pretty fine artwork). I too enjoy Zoe’s columns - well worth signing up for.
Thought a lot about you and your traveling fiascos (the airlines) - we’re just in the UK from Boston (which is why I didn’t get to your column until today) and I think the flight was the shortest part of the trip. Waiting in airports for things to happen was interminable. But now that we’re here and settled and have figured out how to charge all the necessities of life (who knew - back in the day - that one needed so much electronic equipment to survive?) - it was great fun finally to get back to your column. In which, btw, I found no typos. Could be jet lag .. .
MD and I once flew Air Namibia business class from Frankfurt to Capetown, South Africa. We got these little zipper kits filled with all the crap you get on biz class. Turned out they were perfect for carrying all the electrical stuff you have to carry these days. We've each got on marked US, UK and EU. Each contains all the connectors for those places. Now were going to have to throw one together for Australia and NZ. It's all just another one of the hassles of modern day travel.
"A study from 2020 that examined patients who took once-weekly injections over a 52-week period found that while users of Semaglitude lost 7.4 pounds of fat, they also lost 5 pounds of muscle."
They lost just 12.4 pounds in a year??? That hardly seems worth all the side effects.
Or does this mean that for every 7.4 pounds of fat they lost, they also lost 5 pounds of muscle?
I suspect the reason Dr. Mercola posted the rice diet video is the following. He has become very interested in the Jay Feldman Wellness energy-balance videos which advise avoiding producing a lot of stress hormones that he believes are a persistent result of low-carb eating. Feldman advises 55% to 60% carbs and 20% to 40% fat.
Dr. Mercola is currently strongly advising watching these videos.
I'm sorry to say I'm disappointed by your beginning section on the Constitution, expecting Scalia to perhaps explain why those countries who copied our Constitution didn't have the same success. Instead he seems to say that countries who copied our Bill of Rights without the constitutional divisions of power between the legislature and the executive, and within the legislature itself, were not successful. As much as I like Scalia, a contrary argument was made by Henry Hazlitt in his 1942 book "A New Constitution Now". Hazlitt argues that the division of power between House and Senate and between Congress and the Presidency means that bad results can be explained away by blaming the other party's control of one of those other branches of government. He argues that the parliamentary system is better because a concentration of power means a concentration of responsibility. And since a vote of No Confidence forces an election, an unpopular government can be replace quickly rather than waiting several years as under our system.
But I disagree with both Scalia and Hazlitt that either form would or will save us now. Any system over time can be gamed by those who take advantage of its weaknesses, and this becomes more prevalent as people's solidarity diminishes. It is harder to take advantage of people like yourself than it is people that are different in some fundamental way. So a common sense of who we are, of our character and values, a benevolence towards our fellow citizens, seems essential. That is largely gone now.
Our President has repeatedly declared me and people like me as enemies of democracy, and his party supports that declaration. It is common now that ones political affiliation will determine not only the likelihood and severity of punishment for a crime, but also the sense of justice or injustice felt by half of the population. This is not sustainable.
We are suffering under the delusion that our continued success and progress was somehow preordained, and that we can abuse what we all inherited without any lasting bad effect. Like the human body our nation has great resiliency, but there are limits to what injury we can suffer and still recover our health and strength.
Sorry for the extended rant.
I'm a big fan of Hazlitt. He led me to Bastiat, after all. But I'm not sure I agree with him on this one. It may well be a "marry in haste, repent at leisure" kind of deal if things can be changed too quickly, though, God knows, I would like to change things now. I'll have to get the Hazlitt book and put it in my stack.
I pretty much agree with everything else you wrote, though I don't think it's too late. I hope I'm not wrong.
Yes, Hazlitt through his book "Economics in One Lesson", also lead me to Bastiat. His lesson of "looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy" is broadly applicable beyond economics.
I hope I am wrong, but this next year and a half will reveal whether that's the case. (The outcome of the war in Ukraine and the Presidential election.)
Same book that led me to Bastiat.
We don't live in a democracy. We live in a Republic. Democracy is only a part of our political framework along with courts, states, and an armed populace.
Yes, a constitutional republic, to be precise. I get tired to death of everyone yammering about how our democracy is in danger. A lynch mob is a democracy.
John, Mike...
All decent points (of course).
Just incidentally, here's my favorite essay on the US Constitution.
https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/spooner-no-treason-no-vi-the-constitution-of-no-authority-1870
Looks like an anarchist's take on the Constitution.
A dismissal based on labelling a person a "very bad word?"
Kinda like saying "looks like a racist's take...?"
... Anyway, Spooner is quite a figure in early America. Not popular in the popular sense, because as a lawyer, his arguments are razor sharp and consistent and because of that, people experience HUGE cognitive dissonance when reading him. It's profound, I have observed it for 3 decades online.
His first claim to fame is that as a lawyer, he successfully argued against laws requiring licensing to practice law. The Massachusetts Legislature agreed with him in 1836 and abolished the restriction. Kinda like selling ice to Eskimos, there.
Second fame is that he successfully out-competed the US Postal Service, so much so that the feds put him out of business.
"Being an advocate of self-employment and opponent of government regulation of business, in 1844 Spooner started the American Letter Mail Company, which competed with the United States Post Office, whose rates were very high. It had offices in various cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York City. Stamps could be purchased and then attached to letters, which could be brought to any of its offices. From here, agents were dispatched who traveled on railroads and steamboats and carried the letters in handbags. Letters were transferred to messengers in the cities along the routes, who then delivered the letters to the addressees. This was a challenge to the Post Office's legal monopoly.
"As he had done when challenging the rules of the Massachusetts Bar Association, Spooner published a pamphlet titled "The Unconstitutionality of the Laws of Congress Prohibiting Private Mails". Although Spooner had finally found commercial success with his mail company, legal challenges by the government eventually exhausted his financial resources. A law enacted in 1851 that strengthened the federal government's monopoly finally put him out of business. The legacy of Spooner's challenge to the postal service was the reduction in letter postage from 5¢ to 3¢, in response to the competition his company provided which lasted until late 1950's or early 1960's."
3rd fame, and what he's best known for, is his abolitionism.
Interesting fella. Right up my alley, to be sure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysander_Spooner
I didn't say anarchism was bad. It's a well-known political philosophy.
I was not aware of Spooner, however. He is an interesting guy. Plus, I'm old enough to remember when stamps were 3 cents. Hard to believe.
No worries, Mike.
I just don't want onlookers to think we always agree with one-another. ;)
One of my favorites is this short one:
"Against Woman Suffrage"
It's a perfect early use of clickbait for a title, you'll see what I mean.
https://en.liberpedia.org/Against_Woman_Suffrage
I was familiar with Spooner who was introduced to me by an anarchist/libertarian girlfriend 35 or 40 years ago, but I didn't find him persuasive. If I remember correctly the premise was essentially that you can't have any obligations that you haven't agreed to, which once I agreed with, but no longer do.
What do you mean by "obligations," John?
I mean, there are obligations, and there are obligations.
Take food and water. You are obliged to eat and drink them. You're welcome to default on such obligations. The consequences are non-negotiable.
Moreover, whether you agree to those obligations, or not, is immaterial and irrelevant.
So in that sense, I agree there are obligations we may not have agreed to, they exist nonetheless.
Anything else?
Also would like to hear how you liked living in Chiang Mai. I am interested in retiring to SE Asia but don't know how I will handle the humid heat. I understand that Chiang Mai is in the hill country and much more temperate. Is that what you've found? Also PonyTailGuy is Peter Zeihan, whose views on China and Russia seem nonsensical to me. I also don't understand why his views are sought after.
I don't consider food and water (or air or warmth) to be obligations. They are more accurately called requirements for our individual survival. Obligations are social, moral or institutional duties or responsibilities that arise from our existing as human beings and part of a social civilization. Obviously such obligations can be ignored or not performed, but nonfeasance doesn't change the existence of these obligations. If you ask what these obligations are I would say I don't know or at least I'm not prepared to argue them in detail. But I have a clear sense that our civilization has requirements for its existence and continuation. I also think that without civilization human beings could not long exist. In the same way that our existence as an individual requires us to fulfill certain requirements (food, water, air, warmth) so our existence as members of a social species requires certain things from us.
Excellent observation! Yes, the unequal handling of "justice" is precisely what is causing so much grief for society. Perhaps the Department of Justice should be run by a bipartisan consortium of elected representatives of the people rather than one corrupt appointee.
A weight loss shot that makes you burn muscle has got to bad for your heart at some point?
The rice diet people—they lost weight and so “ate” lots of fat and no doubt muscle as well. Once they lost the weight, they couldn’t survive on just rice. Same as how Penn Gillette lost weight in the potato diet.
Mike —
Thanks for the coverage and the happy-making sudden appearance of so many new subscribers. An advertising point for your readers is that if they become paid subscribers to Nutrition in Crisis ($ 6/month; $60/year) they get a signed, personalized copy of Nutrition in Crisis in addition to other premiums still to be determined.
On mass and energy balance, there are many issues. I will quickly describe a couple here and do more detailed comments later.
First what was distinctly wrong. You wrote:
"Let’s just look at one example to keep from getting way too far into the thermodynamic weeds on this. The energy content of protein is 4 kcal per gram. That 4 kcal per gram is in the bonds between the various atoms that make up the amino acids that make the protein."
This is not correct. The 4 kcal/g does not refer to the energy content of the protein or its chemical bonds. Insofar as we can talk about the energy content of a protein (or any chemical compound) it would be the energy of formation of the protein from it constituent elements. This is clearly complicated theoretically and a difficult experimental parameter to measure. The heat of formation of an amino acid from its elements is in the range of 400 - 600 kJoules/mole. (1 kJ = 0.239 kcal)
"When these bonds are broken, the energy is released for the body to use to create other bonds to make other molecules."
This is not correct. The 4 kcal/g represents the free energy of combustion by molecular oxygen. If you do anything else, like take two amino acids and combine them you have to put in energy, you have to find a way to provide a little under 4 kcal/g (usually from another chemical reaction). Of course, in thermodynamics, all of these can be calculated from each other, but we have to be precise about context.
For example, ATP is not a high energy molecule. It does not even have high energy bonds. We talk that way colloquially because we understand that the hydrolysis of ATP to ADP or of ADP to AMP has a free energy of -7.3 kcal/mole. If you do anything else, convert ADP to deoxy-ADP for DNA, or any reactions involving the ring, all bets are off.
This means you can’t go back and forth between mass and energy. So it is important to not lose sight of what we want to know. As I mentioned originally, the reacting species are not characterized by their mass but by their chemistry. And this bears on the obvious question of the identity of what the reactions are. You are trying to control fat, not mass.
Second, thermodynamics demands that you pay attention to simple concepts like system and environment. In a calorimeter, if you consider the calorimeter and its contents to be the system and the universe to be the environment, nothing happens. When we do the experiment, we ask about the system (the food and the oxygen). Energy is not conserved. It is given off to the environment. The kind of analysis is needed to decide when energy balance is a tautology.
More later.
You wrote: "This is not correct. The 4 kcal/g represents the free energy of combustion by molecular oxygen." I'll buy that. I was just trying to explain it in an understandable way for the layman. But it is further proof that the CICO theory is bunk, because it is predicated on the glucose bonds containing 4 kcal of energy. At least since the days of Atwater.
My point still is that it would be better to use mass balance than energy balance in research. It's much easier and more accurate to weigh than to estimate energy expenditure.
I disagree. Mass balance is not accurate at all because it essentially says that all calories are the same. In that, it is just a different form of CICO. but is the complete opposite of chemistry. Chemistry is about stuff, how compounds taste, feel, interact with hormone receptors, etc. The implication of mass balance is that a pound of carbohydrate is the same as a pound of fat. You and I and our gang spent so much time fighting that.
And, if mass balance were to be used, it would violate the second law. Consider a diet-regimen where you theoretically lose a pound of fat and gain a pound of muscle. Volek has actually done such an experiment (fat lost, muscle gained), not exactly equal, of course, but clear effect. Now these are different types of compounds. Protein is a very low entropy compound — high degree of structure. Fat is a high entropy compound — you can put it in the adipocyte with a spoon. In essence, you’ve converted a high entropy compound into a low entropy compound with no net change in mass. That’s a violation of the second law — you can’t do that. If you do it, it’s got to cost you energy.
To some extent, this is all like the old joke about how physicists see things. Condensing a long joke: computer scientist, biochemist and physicist go to the race track. Computer guy checks all the old data on performance, biochemist runs his hand through horses’ manes, pats horses’ legs, etc. In the end, the physicist picks the winning horse. They ask him how he did it. He says “first, assume that a horse is a perfect sphere…”
The bottom line after all this time: Beginning vs. final balance of energy or mass resides in the reaction, in the mechanism, not in the reactions and products. Equilibrium thermodynamics can’t tell you anything about that. It is controlled by kinetics or non-equilibrium thermodynamics (which includes kinetics). We, of course, rarely know that. The actual balance is an experimental issue. Does it happen or not? CICO does not happen all the time. It is not a theoretical rule. It can happen but we have numerous exceptions. I suggest you and I and our friends collect and publish them.
You wrote:
>>The implication of mass balance is that a pound of carbohydrate is the same as a pound of fat.<<
The pound of carbohydrate represents 8,800 kcal; the pound of fat, 19,800 kcal. If one subject who weighed 140 pounds at the pound of carb while another subject who also weighed 140 pounds at the pound of fat, what would they both weigh ten minutes after consumption (assuming to trips to the bathroom after eating)? If they then fasted for three days, what would they each weigh?
I don't understand the drift of this. We have fundamental agreement on the general problem but the issue is becoming clouded.
As pointed our before, a pound of carb represents 8,800 kcal if and only if, you are talking about complete oxidation. If you do anything else, make glycogen, or more important, make glycogen, then hydrolyze it back to glucose and then re-form glycogen, you don't know the energy. Same for fat. Again, the energy is in the reaction not in the reactant.
You can lose more weight, calorie-for-calorie, or gram-for-gram, on carbohydrate restriction than on other diet regimens. This is an observed fact. We agree on that. You know that better anybody. The question is how does that happen, or, in some cases, can I prove that to those who don't believe their eyes. In both cases, you cannot predict or explain with energy arguments (thermodynamics). You have to explain mechanism. Calories (thermo) or grams (mass action) does not have mechanism.
Not sure where our disagreement is. Anyway, check out my latest Substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/richardfeinman/p/calories-in-calories-out-substrate?r=l1rhd&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Maybe Slow Joe is taking a host of statins and it has caused cognitive decline ;)
I would not be surprised in the least.
Mike, since you're hosting an Ask Mike Anything session, we should give you a warm up. In the past week you showed how much less money eating out can be without alcohol, and that you needed to give your liver a rest after returning from Scotland. (We got that loud and clear, eh). And thus the question, how do you know if you're giving your liver a rest? What is work for the liver? Is there much difference between protein, carbs, and fat? Vitamins and minerals? How about acetaminophen, or NSAIDs? How much is nothing significant versus a potential danger? Most of us have a feeling about what alcohol can do, but everyone isn't the same. I wish I could say I looked all of this up ahead of time, but I tried and could not find any easy answers.
You know your liver is getting a rest when you don't load it up with toxic ingredients. One, just one, of the liver's jobs is to detoxify substances that are toxic. Alcohol is toxic. Caffeine is toxic (it's a bridge too far to ask me to ditch coffee, though). Acetaminophen is really toxic (I wouldn't take it on a dare). NSAIDS are sort of toxic. One's liver has a finite capacity to detox. Plus, it has a lot of other jobs. If it's overloaded with Rx drugs, OTC drugs, caffeine, alcohol, etc., then it may not be able to do some of the other things it needs to do. Such as clear insulin from the blood.
Mike, thanks. I found something that can fill all the hours anybody's ever going to have here: The NIH LiverTox reference https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK547852/#IX-C
A lot of stuff that the liver detoxes.
I'm so glad you wrote "Acetaminophen is really toxic (I wouldn't take it on a dare)". I've tried acetaminophen - paracetamol - for pain relief on a few occasions in the past but it always made me feel kind of nauseous. In addition it did absolutely nothing for pain for me.
This Fall may not be the best time to visit Australia. I heard that the Aussie police are now in training to break down doors and forcibly vaccinate unwilling occupants.
Well, so far I don't have to have a vaccine certificate to get in. Otherwise I would not be going.
I always liked the restaurant/ party explanation "More people came in than left." (I think Gary Taubes used that a few years ago in a talk.) But when it comes to food and exercise I think it is easy to think that how much we eat is a decision under our control and how much we exercise is also a decision under our control. The alternative seems to suggest that we can't (don't) control how much we eat or how much we exercise.
Gary and I have batted it back and forth a number of times. It's been so long that I can't remember correctly, but I think he told me he was going to remove it from one of his books. I told him not to, and that if he did, I would take it for my own.
As to control... They're both under our control. But in the long term, hunger almost always wins. Which is why the low-carb diet is so nice. You don't have to be hungry.
I wrote a book about CICO, setting about to prove that Calories In - Calories Out HAS TO BE precise, and stupidly wrote the book before the final results were in. Yes, I was that sure of myself. But, the CO was not accurate. Nervous jitters and perhaps more heat radiated when the CI was high, and similarly, my body partly shut down when the CI was low. I found that I could maintain my weight at 1300 kcalories/day up to about 1800 kcalories/day, while superficially maintaining the same level of activity. What an embarrassment. Thankfully, the book didn't sell. So, there's yet another confounder to this theory.
I love zoe and I subscribe to her weekly missive—but I wish she had a Substack because the comment section is so interesting. I’d happily pay. And the same for Malcolm Kendrick btw. (Is he still alive?)
Yep, Malcolm is still alive. I was able to hang out with him a few months ago.
Good to know! I always enjoy his writings.
Great Arrow article, as usual, Dr. Eades!
What are your thoughts about ApoB being a better indicator of cardiovascular disease? I stumbled upon this study from one of the commenters in Courtney Luna's YouTube carnivore vlog:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8540246/
Ask Mike Anything: I would absolutely love it if you attacked the hidden causes behind the hypertension epidemic with same tenacity as you do with the cholesterol-CVD hypothesis (and statins). Are there links to seed oils, potassium or magnesium deficiencies, environmental toxins, lectins/oxalates, etc.? I'm tired of doctors waving their hands, ordering drastic reduction in salt intake and simply prescribing Ca-blockers/ACE-inhibitors. I have to believe that there's more to the renin-angiotensin cascade, but I'm way too ignorant.
As to the ApoB... I always like to think of Panofsky's law, named after Pief Panofsky, founder of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, former presidential science advisor and Manhattan Project physicist. Panofsky said, "if you throw money at an effect and it doesn't get bigger, that means it's not really there."
Those trying to show that somehow blood lipids cause heart disease have gone to great lengths to come up with some sort of connection. They've sliced and diced lipid fractions so that there are as many of them as their are words in Inuit for snow. And yet the connection between lipids and heart disease is tenuous at best. And vastly more than a ton of money has been thrown at research on the subject. (See Panofsky's law above.) About the only lipid that may actually cause coronary artery issues is Lp(a). But Lp(a) isn't reduced by statins, so it's pretty much ignored. What does reduce Lp(a) is dietary saturated fat, but God forbid that we mention that.
There is a lot more to the renin-angiotensin cascade, but that's for another day.
Thanks for your speedy reply, Dr. Eades! Yeah, I figured that ApoB would be the latest "woo-woo" from the lipophobes. I really appreciate your insight and also can't wait for your future posts on the R-A cascade!
Oops... Forgot to put my name:
Chris in San Diego
Looking forward to seeing you in Sydney. I'll be thinking of a question or two for you...
Why don't you go first and occupy all my time with easy one. :)
Dr Eades, gutted that I won't be able to make Low Carb Sydney as I'll be away travelling in South Australia. Don't know if you've been to AU before but the trip can be pretty draining even in business class; hope you get plenty of time to recover and the opportunity to enjoy the Spring sunshine. All the best for your trip and the conference.
Will be sorry to miss you. I'm dreading the trip over and back, but really look forward to actually being there.
Mike - another good one - especially the info on the Faucsster. Not that anyone should be surprised by that information. Somewhere I read that the military in this country was the one “paying” for those warp speed jabs - which is why they didn’t have to pay attention to things like transmission or not using people with autoimmune problems (or pregnant women) in their “trials”. I might have seen it in Sasha Latypova’s column (she also displays some pretty fine artwork). I too enjoy Zoe’s columns - well worth signing up for.
Thought a lot about you and your traveling fiascos (the airlines) - we’re just in the UK from Boston (which is why I didn’t get to your column until today) and I think the flight was the shortest part of the trip. Waiting in airports for things to happen was interminable. But now that we’re here and settled and have figured out how to charge all the necessities of life (who knew - back in the day - that one needed so much electronic equipment to survive?) - it was great fun finally to get back to your column. In which, btw, I found no typos. Could be jet lag .. .
MD and I once flew Air Namibia business class from Frankfurt to Capetown, South Africa. We got these little zipper kits filled with all the crap you get on biz class. Turned out they were perfect for carrying all the electrical stuff you have to carry these days. We've each got on marked US, UK and EU. Each contains all the connectors for those places. Now were going to have to throw one together for Australia and NZ. It's all just another one of the hassles of modern day travel.
"A study from 2020 that examined patients who took once-weekly injections over a 52-week period found that while users of Semaglitude lost 7.4 pounds of fat, they also lost 5 pounds of muscle."
They lost just 12.4 pounds in a year??? That hardly seems worth all the side effects.
Or does this mean that for every 7.4 pounds of fat they lost, they also lost 5 pounds of muscle?
Yep, that's what it means.
I suspect the reason Dr. Mercola posted the rice diet video is the following. He has become very interested in the Jay Feldman Wellness energy-balance videos which advise avoiding producing a lot of stress hormones that he believes are a persistent result of low-carb eating. Feldman advises 55% to 60% carbs and 20% to 40% fat.
Dr. Mercola is currently strongly advising watching these videos.
Dr. Mercola must be easily persuaded.