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TheNiteOwl
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10 Oct 2011, 2:14 pm

I'm beginning my journey of a gluten and dairy free diet.

I understand that gluten can be problematic for those on the spectrum for two reasons...

1) Our gut cannot process gluten like most NT's and...

2) The lectins in wheat is actually a toxin to help the plant disuade humans from eating it!

I have a very deeply held belief that the stereotype "stone age man" has much in common with those on the spectrum. I've considered a blog about this for future note. A paleo-diet, one likely most used by humans before the advent of agriculture, is probably most benefitting for keeping up lean muscle mass, loosing body fat, and keeping the mind clear of nasty glucose high's and low's. :o

I've been turned on to the Paleo-Diet by the blog at
Nerd Fitness

I'd love to delve into this topic, and the correlation of this diet to Autism and early humans...


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10 Oct 2011, 5:02 pm

I've found that a gluten and dairy free diet has significantly reduced negative GI symptoms for me, including bloating. I've noticed less brain fog too. I don't use this diet for weight loss. I don't use it to reduce/cure autistic traits.

I can't speak much of early humans as I can only speculate what life was like for them.



Janissy
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10 Oct 2011, 5:04 pm

:thumleft: I'm doing it too! It's been a couple weeks now.

There are several books and blogs. I had to read pretty extensively until I really believed that it was the right thing to do. It's so hard to kick the "whole wheat bread is good, red meat is bad" paradigm. I had to read quite a bit about metabolism before I believed it.

The first part is hard. For several days I was simultaneously full and hungry, which is a bizarre feeling. My stomache was full but my brain was saying "you didn't eat enough carbs!! !!" When that feeling got too weird and uncomfortable I curbed it with fruit. If this happens to you (and it probably will, it's very common) try to curb it with fruit even though your body is screaming for bread or pasta. The feeling does pass.

Good luck on your journey. :D

I decided to do it because I was heading towards insulin resistance and I am NT. Paleo authors have made an excellent case for why no humans are particularly adapted to a high carb diet, although some are less destroyed by it than others. As some authors say, perhaps in thousands of years humans will have adapted, but not yet.

This is my favorite blog on the subject:

http://www.gnolls.org/index/

It talks about the science behind this and is not fluffy. It's actually rather aggressive.



anna-banana
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10 Oct 2011, 5:58 pm

how come olive oil is allowed, it's a product of agriculture. stone-age people didn't have agriculture. shouldn't you have lard instead?


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KemoreJ
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10 Oct 2011, 11:53 pm

Wow! This is only the second time I have come across this concept. I once stumbled upon an essay by some scientist on the theory but for the life of me cannot find it again.

My spidey senses tell me there is something in this. I mean evolution takes thousands of years right? Homo Sapien just cannot evolve quickly enough for the gut to adapt to such drastic shifts in diet.

Makes sense to me.

Thanks for the link and inspiration.

:D

[b]I've just come back to edit this.[b]

I was just on Facebook and discovered that a friend, a nutritionist, is experimenting with the Paleo diet herself!

http://lindseystirling.com/blog/?p=109


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Janissy
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11 Oct 2011, 12:48 pm

anna-banana wrote:
how come olive oil is allowed, it's a product of agriculture. stone-age people didn't have agriculture. shouldn't you have lard instead?


Hunter/gatherers had access to olives (if they lived in certain places) so that's close enough. Lard, butter or ghee is recommended for cooking, olive oil in moderation.

It's impossible to be a total purist on this diet. Agriculture and the settled civilization that goes with it has changed many plant and animal species irreversibly. The closest that it's possible to get today is hunting and fishing and eating what you kill. Then have a vegetable garden and/or go to a pick-your-own farm and get your produce. But it isn't necessary to replicate their diet so exactly. The important thing is to get reasonably close to foods that our digestive system evolved to handle. It can handle olive oil fine, since chemically it's close to the olives our ancestors ate (although changed by agriculture). What it can't handle as well is what the paleo authors call "franken-fats", the fats that have been hydrogenated or dehydrogenated. They confound our digestive systems with their chemical unfamiliarity to what is found in nature.

The avoidance of wheat and other grains isn't because they weren't found in nature before agriculture. They were, but in very, very small quantities that could be digested with only a bit of insulin released. The described problem of a carb-based diet isn't that they aren't found in nature (they are, and were eaten by hunter-gatherers). But rather that agriculture, especially these days with farm subsidies- makes them available in a much larger proportion than our digestive systems can comfortably handle. We do find ways to handle it, but often at the price of having to produce gigantic quantities of insulin, something which causes problems when done for decades.



Janissy
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11 Oct 2011, 12:56 pm

KemoreJ wrote:
My spidey senses tell me there is something in this. I mean evolution takes thousands of years right? Homo Sapien just cannot evolve quickly enough for the gut to adapt to such drastic shifts in diet.


Absolutely! That is the principle. There has been one evolutionary adaption that has happened since the 10,000 years that agriculture was developed. Many people (but not all) now make lactase as adults and so can digest milk sugar without incident. Since I am one of those people, I haven't given up dairy, since adult lactase is an evolutionary adaption that I inherited. But our bodies haven't (yet?) evolved a way to digest gigantic amounts of carbs without also making gigantic amounts of insulin so I left the grains and artificial sweets behind. I eat unprocessed fruit, as my ancestors did.

It's the awsomest thing. It's turning into a special interest for me.



TheNiteOwl
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11 Oct 2011, 2:36 pm

KemoreJ wrote:
Wow! This is only the second time I have come across this concept. I once stumbled upon an essay by some scientist on the theory but for the life of me cannot find it again.

My spidey senses tell me there is something in this. I mean evolution takes thousands of years right? Homo Sapien just cannot evolve quickly enough for the gut to adapt to such drastic shifts in diet.

Makes sense to me.

Thanks for the link and inspiration.

:D


Thank you as well for the good cheer. I will post my body stats, as well as my general feeling of physical well being in the coming days and weeks ahead...


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KemoreJ
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11 Oct 2011, 6:17 pm

I am so glad to hear of your successes with so-called "alternatives". I have been feeling somewhat uninspired and alone in this respect, with regards to AS. Please do share you experiences and stats. I am also dedicated to living well by focussing mostly and so simply on the food I eat.

Janissy. Thank you for your personal experience with Lactase. Of course there is so much info out there and one must prioritise what to experiment with. I have been interested in Lactase but not been sure of how it works or whether it works or how long lasting the effects. I do react to dairy but I feel there are such positive benefits to consuming ORGANIC unprocessed dairy.dairy. I feel confident enough now to mention that as well as Ayurveda, I am also using the chakras as one of my central reference points to judge what my body/mind needs. And dairy, as it is naturally, is essential for emotional wellbeing, among other things.

:D


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anna-banana
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12 Oct 2011, 1:32 pm

Janissy wrote:
KemoreJ wrote:
My spidey senses tell me there is something in this. I mean evolution takes thousands of years right? Homo Sapien just cannot evolve quickly enough for the gut to adapt to such drastic shifts in diet.


Absolutely! That is the principle. There has been one evolutionary adaption that has happened since the 10,000 years that agriculture was developed. Many people (but not all) now make lactase as adults and so can digest milk sugar without incident. Since I am one of those people, I haven't given up dairy, since adult lactase is an evolutionary adaption that I inherited. But our bodies haven't (yet?) evolved a way to digest gigantic amounts of carbs without also making gigantic amounts of insulin so I left the grains and artificial sweets behind. I eat unprocessed fruit, as my ancestors did.

It's the awsomest thing. It's turning into a special interest for me.


hunter-gatherers never created a civilisation like ours though, it took agriculture to enable humans to really progress, and fast. might have been something in the food? ;)


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12 Oct 2011, 1:33 pm

Good luck on a paleo diet! I've been eating this way for awhile at this point, and it has done wonders for my health.

Something that might be of interest and has a paleo connection - you might also look at taking vitamin D, or getting a little bit of sunshine each day - avoiding being burnt. Saw another mention about the theory of a possible connection between low vitamin D3 levels and autism.

This mention came from Dr. Cannell's news letter, which can be seen at.

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/

And the trial underway.

"Autism Trial with Vitamin D"
http://anp.ucsf.edu/research/trials/vitamind

Not to over do it with links! But if you do look into supplements, thought this a nice article explaining how to properly take D3.

"Getting vitamin D right"

http://www.trackyourplaque.com/blog/201 ... right.html



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12 Oct 2011, 3:52 pm

anna-banana wrote:

hunter-gatherers never created a civilisation like ours though, it took agriculture to enable humans to really progress, and fast. might have been something in the food? ;)


It's a fair question. If the insulin spikes that come with grains are so hurtful to our bodies, how did civilization not happen until we cultivated them?

Anthropologists say that grain and animal domestication allowed people to stop moving around in little tribes and settle in one place. It's hard to build culture on the move. Agriculture also allowed people to have access to far more food in quantity because they controlled its growth. So what was in the food was calories and lots and lots of them. The Paleo Diet people are actually fine with eating farm animals rather than hunted animals, so long as they live in a reasonably traditional way. They advocate grass fed beef, for example.

The damage from a grain-dense diet really takes decades to happen. By that time, kids have already been had, so there is no evolutionary pressure against it. But they call things like heart disease and diabtes the diseases of civilization for a reason.

A lot of health writers (non-Paleo ones like Michael Pollan) say that the true damage didn't come from the Agricultural Revolution and its' grain, it came from the Industrial Revolution which paved the way for processed food. Whichever revolution you decide is the real culprit, giving up processed food can only make a person healthier. Even critics of Paleo diets do admit that you will get healthier, they just say that a person could include tradtional grains and also be healthy. That's what some people call the Bible Diet. The Bible Diet is considerably healthier than what the random person is eating right now, but giving up grains is working for me.



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12 Oct 2011, 5:04 pm

Janissy wrote:
anna-banana wrote:

hunter-gatherers never created a civilisation like ours though, it took agriculture to enable humans to really progress, and fast. might have been something in the food? ;)


It's a fair question. If the insulin spikes that come with grains are so hurtful to our bodies, how did civilization not happen until we cultivated them?

Anthropologists say that grain and animal domestication allowed people to stop moving around in little tribes and settle in one place. It's hard to build culture on the move. Agriculture also allowed people to have access to far more food in quantity because they controlled its growth. So what was in the food was calories and lots and lots of them. The Paleo Diet people are actually fine with eating farm animals rather than hunted animals, so long as they live in a reasonably traditional way. They advocate grass fed beef, for example.

The damage from a grain-dense diet really takes decades to happen. By that time, kids have already been had, so there is no evolutionary pressure against it. But they call things like heart disease and diabtes the diseases of civilization for a reason.


these are all good points.

Quote:
A lot of health writers (non-Paleo ones like Michael Pollan) say that the true damage didn't come from the Agricultural Revolution and its' grain, it came from the Industrial Revolution which paved the way for processed food. Whichever revolution you decide is the real culprit, giving up processed food can only make a person healthier. Even critics of Paleo diets do admit that you will get healthier, they just say that a person could include tradtional grains and also be healthy. That's what some people call the Bible Diet. The Bible Diet is considerably healthier than what the random person is eating right now, but giving up grains is working for me.


I suspect they might be right about the processed foods thing. the Bible Diet sounds like something I might try actually, I've no problem with processing grains and skipping my morning oatmeal makes my adhd 10 times worse :-/

the main problem I have with paleo diet is that it's so unrealistic to maintain in the modern world. that makes it look like another one of those fad diets - it has a catchy, half-scientific theme that many people are drawn to.

also - there's only so many people you could feed with free-range, grass-fed beef nowadays. it might be a healthy alternative but it can't realistically be recommended for the general population. we'd need another few Earths to grow all the pasture.


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KemoreJ
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12 Oct 2011, 9:55 pm

"the main problem I have with paleo diet is that it's so unrealistic to maintain in the modern world. that makes it look like another one of those fad diets - it has a catchy, half-scientific theme that many people are drawn to.
also - there's only so many people you could feed with free-range, grass-fed beef nowadays. it might be a healthy alternative but it can't realistically be recommended for the general population. we'd need another few Earths to grow all the pasture".[/quote]

eek still working out how these quotes etc work and how to respond to multiple people in one post.

This is a very pragmatic approach. Personally I do what I can, given the resources at my disposal. I am middle class on a pension and pay low rent. I am very fortunate. So while I am exploring ways to improve my own health, given perhaps greater priveleges, I am also mindful of remembering and consolidating ways to help others who are not so fortunate. I really enjoy doing it. It's like a little personal sustainability project. Of course at the same time working towards the cheapest and most sustainable health ideas for myself. For example, if I have an idea or suspicion that a particular mineral or such will help me, I generally look for a natural supplement. These can give faster results - this is useful when wanting to know if they are what my body needs. If it works I will gradually research the most natural, local, organic and cheap means for getting that mineral, for example, into my diet.

It's fun! :D

"A lot of health writers (non-Paleo ones like Michael Pollan) say that the true damage didn't come from the Agricultural Revolution and its' grain, it came from the Industrial Revolution which paved the way for processed food. Whichever revolution you decide is the real culprit, giving up processed food can only make a person healthier. Even critics of Paleo diets do admit that you will get healthier, they just say that a person could include tradtional grains and also be healthy. That's what some people call the Bible Diet. The Bible Diet is considerably healthier than what the random person is eating right now, but giving up grains is working for me."

Yes I had this idea the other day of the average Western diet being like the "Central Station" of a network of train lines. The end destination of each line represents any "alternative" or complementary lifestyle or dietary system you can think of. Any travel away from the Central Station has to be a good move. :wink:


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12 Oct 2011, 10:57 pm

Agriculture is something that also dates back as far as 50,000bc, well into the stone age. It's more a specific type of agriculture that is linked with 'modern' civilization that arouse around 8,000bc - Totalitarian Agriculture. The grains and vegetables and such were part of stone age diets, the so called 'hunter-gatherers', that's what the 'gatherer' refers to =P. The evidence is there that they not only gathered such things but were fairly proficient in planting and cultivating, just in very minor amounts due to their nomadic nature. It wasnt until the settling of the tigris valley and other areas of the worlds that didnt suit the hunter/gatherer nature that they began to learn agriculture in the manner it's thought of today, few people cultivating massive amounts of land for the purpose of mass storage and re-usability and as a staple in the daily diet to feed ever-growing populations.

And unlike modern day insults (stereo types even) that go along with the term 'stone-age' they were very advanced people. Far more self-sufficient than 99.99999% of the population of this world today. They were probably very highly aware of many types of plants including things like olives and many uses for them beyond just picking and eating them, they were probably well aware of how rich in oil the olive was so there is no far stretch in considering something like Olive Oil a part of a paleo diet, along with probably a lot of stuff most people would be surprised by (including the highly uneducated people who wrote about that paleo diet stuff lol.) You have to go back much much farther in the evolutionary charts past 'stone-age man' to find our chest beating bonking their women's heads with clubs and dragging them off idiots that most people mistakenly think of when they hear 'stone age' (well, maybe the bashing women's heads with clubs has never really left us =P)


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13 Oct 2011, 5:03 pm

KemoreJ wrote:

eek still working out how these quotes etc work and how to respond to multiple people in one post.

This is a very pragmatic approach. Personally I do what I can, given the resources at my disposal. I am middle class on a pension and pay low rent. I am very fortunate. So while I am exploring ways to improve my own health, given perhaps greater priveleges, I am also mindful of remembering and consolidating ways to help others who are not so fortunate. I really enjoy doing it. It's like a little personal sustainability project. Of course at the same time working towards the cheapest and most sustainable health ideas for myself. For example, if I have an idea or suspicion that a particular mineral or such will help me, I generally look for a natural supplement. These can give faster results - this is useful when wanting to know if they are what my body needs. If it works I will gradually research the most natural, local, organic and cheap means for getting that mineral, for example, into my diet.

It's fun! :D


indeed it is! :D you are a wise person, Kemore. my point was - we are all, probably, trying to follow this idea, hopefully, to the best of our abilities. you are correct that we are fortunate enough in being privileged to even have the choice of what we eat. thing is, our privilege works to our advantage, but our advantage is dependent on the underpriviledge of others - which is quite obvious if you live in a state that sponsors its local agriculture in order to gain benefit over others that do no such thing. but I don't want to get overly political about this.

my point was - it's ok to make your own diet choices, but we need to be careful about what we advocate. we should remain skeptical about advocating this paleo diet to the general population unless we have solid evidence to back up its health benefits. just imagine if the WHO was to replace the standard food guide pyramid with the paleo-diet recommendations! disaster all the way. and the purity of the original idea has nothing to do with this (to even compare the diet staples of our ancestors with ours is nonsensical; and to compare a staple produce, say olives, in the state that we'd arrived at through thousands of years of selective breeding in order to have the right fat rendering ratio, could only be born in a very primitive, not to say "paleo", mind) if health benefits are all you're after, you still need to do your own research.


Quote:
Yes I had this idea the other day of the average Western diet being like the "Central Station" of a network of train lines. The end destination of each line represents any "alternative" or complementary lifestyle or dietary system you can think of. Any travel away from the Central Station has to be a good move. :wink:


well I hope you're right, I'm quite far from the central station myself ;)


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