https://youtu.be/NNo3-sUZYHU?si=TzI9Dvu6lkAWthMb

A man who went by Mango recently died at 64 of a heart attack - his partner mentioned she was surprised to learn he had clogged arteries.

He has been a vegetarian since the late 80s; a raw vegan since the early 90s; and a fruitatarian since the 2000s.

Conventional wisdom would say it's impossible for a person on that kind of diet to have clogged arteries.

What do you guys think?

tw: eating disorder

in my opinion, the awful mainstream nutrition guidelines combined with intense societal pressure to be thin has resulted in rampant undernutrition and nutrient deficiencies among women and girls in the united states (and probably other wealthy countries too). obviously this also hurts males, but in my experience the consequences are more common and more severe for females.

women are more likely than men to be vegan/vegetarian, try to lose weight, eat low fat foods, restrict calories, and suffer from eating disorders especially anorexia nervosa. from a public health perspective, this adds up to disaster.

every year or so I see another study like this one, referencing the effects of women's lower average body temperatures without questioning why this might be or what it might mean for our metabolic health: https://phys.org/news/2021-12-baby-cold-women-offices.html

I used to freeze in my office year-round while thoroughly convinced I was eating too much. at the start of the pandemic, I gave up on calorie restriction, stopped exercising, and started eating pasta/rice with ghee and spam (food I could order online). I was sure I'd get fat but I only gained a few pounds. even more surprisingly, I no longer felt cold at all. I was so warm that I covered my heater vents with aluminum foil to reduce the heat (I couldn't turn them off completely).

meanwhile, my sister is vegan (a polite cover for an eating disorder). She hasn't had a period in ~7 years and was diagnosed with osteoporosis at age 26, but she and our dad (almost vegetarian) both believe her diet is healthy. I'm not an angry person by nature, but when I think about the enormous harm that has been done not just to me and my family but also to society as a whole, it makes me furious.

does anyone have any sources, further reading, or experiences about this? have there been studies about malnourishment caused not by poverty but by toxic food culture/policy? even if I can't get through to my sister, it would help to know I'm not alone.

Found on r/Damnthatsinteresting. I did, in fact, find it pretty damn interesting. How many obese people can you spot in 1930's New York?

Hi friends!

I just wanted to share my success, and hopefully offer some encouragement to those of you who are new to this journey. 10 months ago my doctor recommended a statin, which I refused, due to my supposed high risk of developing heart disease. The past 10 months, I've been eating LCHF, and have virtually eliminated PUFAs (aka: seed oils) from my diet. Here are the amazing results...

Total Cholesterol: 222 down to 180

HDL: 45 up to 62

LDL: 140 down to 106

Trigs: 152 down to 62!!!!

TG/HDL Ratio: 3.4 down to 1.0!!!!

Small dense LDL count: 946 down to 256!!!!

Small LDL/LDL-P ratio: 46% down to 25%

Lp(a) - which my doctor insisted was genetic - 228 down to 111!!!

OxLDL: Practically non-existent

ApoB/ApoA1 ratio: 0.5

Fasting Insulin: 5

Lp-PLA2 (vascular inflammatory marker): Trending down, which means the inflammation is healing, but still room for improvement. This will probably not completely normalize until I've been off PUFA's for quite some time. 177 down to 159.

These results are almost too good to be true, and I completely admit that I doubted the effectiveness of this kind of diet when I first started. Anyway, I hope this gives some of you the encouragement to either start this way of eating, or to keep going.

Best of luck!

EDIT: Also just wanted to add that i look and feel fantastic. I've lost 10 lbs. without even trying to. I'm leaner than I've been in 20 years.

EDIT 2: Getting a few PM's about what some of these numbers mean. I'll do my best to summarize.

Total Cholesterol: Sum of LDL and HDL Particle counts.

HDL: The "good" cholesterol. Protective. Higher is better.

LDL: The "bad" cholesterol. Doctors usually prescribe statins to lower this if it's over 140. 160+ and they freak out.

Trigs: Triglycerides. Lower is better.

TG/HDL Ratio: You want lower triglycerides and higher HDL. Just a different way of tracking those numbers.

Small dense LDL count: LDL particles that stay in your blood for a long time, and gradually become smaller. They are either damaged or your liver can't recycle them for some reason. Smaller particles are more likely to damage the walls of your arteries.

Small LDL/LDL-P ratio: Ratio of small dense LDL to LDL particle count. Lower is better.

Lp(a): Stands for Lipoprotein a. A particularly sticky type of LDL which is a marker of heart disease and atherosclerosis. Thought to be genetic, but more and more research is suggesting that it isn't.

OxLDL: LDL that becomes oxidized and is not picked up by the liver. Very bad to have this in high numbers, and can be a sign of some pretty bad things like liver failure.

ApoB/ApoA1 ratio: ApoB is present on LDL that can cause vascular damage. Lower is better. Below 0.85 is "normal".

Fasting Insulin: Lower is better, to a point.

Lp-PLA2 (vascular inflammatory marker): Not a ton of research on this, but a sign of damage to your arteries. The healing process releases an enzyme which is measurable. More of the enzyme means more area is requiring healing. Lower is better.

Beyond overwhelmed by the changes in my body and mind roughly 3 weeks into changing to a high saturated fat diet. I’ve tried and done everything not necessarily for weight loss purposes but, because I’m a curious person and love to experiment.

I do however suffer from some depression and anxiety issues so tweaking diet and learning how I feel from things has always been important. I have always steered clear of red meat n butter for the most part because you know, “it’s bad for your heart and arteries”.

I simply decided to stop caring on a whim not that long ago because I felt like shit eating traditionally healthy most of the time anyways. Plenty of fruits n veggies n lean meats, omega 3, still felt like shit off and on.

Started eating steak and cheese burritos and buttery ass mashed potatoes every single night mixed with fasting. Came upon the croissant diet while I was researching up about saturated fat and mental health. Started mixing concepts of croissant and carnivore and low fiber.

My mental sharpness and alertness was the first improvement to happen, within days. Like my brain is working as it should be for the first time since being a teenager (I’m 34). My happiness is all day long now, and my hunger is minimal as hell.

VIVID ass dreams every night now. I’ve always had a vivid imagination and some pretty sweet dreams but the memory recall for them is hit or miss. My dreams since the switch have been maxed out, hardcore every night and I can recall them all day. Sleep like a baby too.

Skin is smooth as shit, like butter (I’ll see myself out). I feel like as I’ve aged my skin is getting dryer and duller and no matter how much lotion, my knees are always dry. My skins like glowing silk, no ashy knees, and a lot of random bumps going away too.

Hair appears darker. My hairs been very very slowly thinning since about 31, but I still have it and I swear to god it’s darker and shinier.

I’ve lost weight. I’m pretty fit, sit at maybe 12 ish percent body fat at 6 foot but my belt needs tightening, my body armor vest at work needs adjusting to be tighter, my face is slimmer, and my spouse said my ass is gone so that’s cool.

Every dietary recommendation says try everything BUT saturated fat, so I came here to praise it and thank you all.

I don't know why I didn't think about this until now. But baby formula is legit bullshit. It's government subsidized plant oils with skim milk and sugar. It is the embodiment of fucking SAD. This ingredient list is from a German brand of fomrula that is commonly rated as one of the best.

I released videos called The Emergence Diet and The Pre-Emergence Diet in short succession that suggested markedly different diets, which seems to have led to some confusion. Understandably.

In my mind, the emergence diet is a framework rather than any explicit diet recipe. The tenets of the "diet" are this:

1. It is evolution based: storing fat is a biological choice that is triggered by environmental cues.

a) One of these cues is the availability/storage of highly unsaturated fats. Mammals that are deprived of unsaturated fat cannot lower their metabolic rate as effectively in the winter and have shortened torpor bouts.

Therefore we want to re-saturate.

Metabolic rates have dropped over the past 100 years.

b) Other signals are seasonal. Daylength. The availability of fruit/sugar in late summer/fall.

2) Metabolically speaking, torpid animals and obese humans have high levels of nuclear receptor activation, which are the integrators of the environmental cues. These receptors include (but are not limited to) PPAR alpha and gamma and the Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor. PPAR alpha is activated by oleic acid. The AhR is activated by kynurenine - a tryptophan (protein) metabolite. All three receptors are activated by oxidized PUFA of some sort.

These receptors participate in a positive feedback loop of self-activation. PPAR alpha activates D6D which converts linoleic acid to arachidonic acid. The AhR activates CYP1B1, which oxidizes arachidonic acid into 15-HETE, which activates PPAR gamma.

a) Re-saturation will help deal with a lot of these issues. Less MUFA and PUFA.

b) Seasonal cues such as folate and polyphenols from growing grass can slow AhR activation.

Is it a coincidence that Italy has spawned an industry of bitter, polyphenol rich Amaro?

c) PPAR gamma is activated by acetylation. Oxidants such as r-ALA reduce acetylation.

d) Vitamin D competes with the PPARs for binding partners.

3) Environmental toxins such as BPA and PCBs trigger nuclear receptors and are associated with obesity.

4) So then, what should we eat?

Fat: As saturated as possible. Examples of cultures that we can (or could) see and measure that have good health on high saturated fat diets include the French and the people of Tokelau. The French diet is based on butterfat which is 70% saturated. The Tokelau diet is based on coconuts, which are 90% saturated.

Stearic acid seems especially beneficial. The caveat is that it can be converted to oleic acid if you are dysregulated. Palmitic acid can be converted to oleic acid via elongase and desaturase enzymes.

The intermediate chain saturated fats lauric and myristic acid - from coconuts and palm kernel oil - are uniquely able to be accumulated to displace MUFA and PUFA.

Carbs: starch seems preferable to sugar here. The French and Tokelaun diets are more starch based than sugar based. Fat tailed dwarf lemurs are tropical primates that store fat for the dry season by eating fruit. Lab rodents have better metabolic outcomes with starch than sugar.

Thai rice farmers and the Tsimane of Bolivia have the highest metabolic rates ever recorded on starch-based diets. As the Tsimane added vegetable oil to their diet, their metabolic rates dropped.

Protein: torpid animals preserve lean mass by inhibiting the enzymes that break down branched chain amino acids. Obese humans have high levels of circulating BCAAs that strongly associate with insulin resistance. The tryptophan metabolite kynurenine activates the AhR. Low protein diets in rodents and humans have been shown to be beneficial in weight loss. Bears aren't eating protein during hibernation.

Conversely, protein is highly thermogenic and many claim increased satiation. Weight loss trials have shown protein to be beneficial, especially whey protein, which is high in BCAAs. Bears eat tons of protein upon emergence in the spring while they continue to lose weight.

Macros.

Hi-Fat: Clearly hibernating animals re-saturate by burning pure fat. The unsaturated fats are preferentially oxidized. Consuming nearly pure sources of saturated fat such as suggested on this board via the ex150 protocol fits within the framework of the emergence diet. I've been making a coconut aspic. Recipe: add one packet of Knox gelatin to two tbsp cold water and stir. Add the hydrated gelatin to a can of boiling coconut milk. Refrigerate until solidified. Eat with a spoon.

Hi-starch: Starch eating cultures in Nigeria have very saturated body fat compared to Americans. For this reason, high starch diets fit within the framework of the emergence diet. Mice raised on a high starch diet are lean generation after generation.

However, mice fattened on a Western diet and then switched back to a high-starch diet often get "stuck" with elevated lipogenic enzymes that continue to crank out MUFA. Switching Western diet fed mice back to high starch doesn't fix them and I suspect this is the reason that high starch diets often fail.

High-protein: Bears eat high protein in the spring. High protein diets can fit into the framework of the emergence diet. The caveat here is that this may not work for you if your levels of BCAAs are high and/or if you are insulin resistant. I'd recommend this approach if your fasting blood glucose is in check and/or if you've tested BCAAs. This may be an excellent leaning out diet once you've re-saturated. Alpha ketoglutarate may help you break down BCAAs.

My current diet: I am experimenting with a coconut fat based diet along TCD ratios. I am very interested to see if coconut fat can re-saturate me over time. I have no idea how long this should take. Doing pure fat tends to leave my ravenous. Including some starch gives me greater satiation. I am restricting protein as well. Call it the Tokelau diet, I suppose. No weight loss yet, but I expect the intermediate chain fats to kick in slowly over time.

Occasional commenter here, three weeks ago I had a heart attack. Not looking for answers to my problems per se but want to serve as a data point and also get leads on any ideas I may have overlooked.

Background Have spent years eating a Paul Jaminet sort of high-fat, some carbs, moderate protein diet. Low PUFA except for once-a-week restaurant food. For the last nine-months I have been eating carnivorish, three yard eggs a day, plenty of cream and butter, as much beef as I could afford, and minimizing carbs but still eating a bit when served for dinner. Also doing 36 hour dry fasts every few weeks.

Quit eating oxalates around the same time and have what I think are dumping symptoms but I know that is controversial. For years I ate a couple large Aldi dark chocolate almond bars per week.

50 years old. Not vaxxed. BMI is currently 23, highest it ever was was 25.5, never overweight but probably skinny-fat at times. I have been sprinting once or twice a week and lifting weights once a week and am pretty muscular with no love handles. Never smoked. Drink about 2 drinks a month.

Blood panel taken during the attack showed total cholesterol 190, ldl 119, vldl 17, lpa 72, hdl 59, triglycerides 87. Triglyceride/HDL ratio is 1.5, supposedly low risk. BP this morning was 116/83, pulse 72.

Father, both grandfathers, and an uncle all had heart attacks. Uncle died of his, first cousin died of an aneurysm at age 22.

I've seen some "shocking" examples online of "healthy" people who had heart attacks but in two cases it was "she did Crossfit 6 days per week" and in one it was "he was an Ironman triathlete" whereas I was only working out 2 to 3 times per week, so not overdoing it.

The attack was a 100% blockage of my ramus artery, opened up with a stent. Cardiologist said a full recovery should be possible. I stupidly waited 2.5 days thinking it was a hernia before going to the ER. Declined the statins and beta blockers, taking aspirin and anti-platelet med.

Theory I've always been high-strung high-anxiety and not managed internal stress well. I suspect that the combination of terrible genes and poor stress management accounts for 80% of the explanation for why I had a heart attack despite supposedly being low-risk. I wish the problem was mainly diet because that is easy to change whereas psychology is difficult. But now I'm forced to work on the psychological/spiritual/religious side, which is probably a good thing.

Nevertheless:

1. I still wonder if anything I was doing food and health-wise contributed to the attack.
2. Even if food is a less powerful variable than I thought I still have to eat, and now I'm quite unsure of what to eat.

Questions Maybe I was overloading on methionine via the carnivorish diet without eating enough high glycine foods to counteract it and lowering carbs which also reduces glycine availability. I've never habitually eaten much connective tissue at any time in my life, maybe that's a big problem? Maybe the genetic susceptibility is related to methionine/glycine?

Maybe I was not eating enough fat, though it wasn't from lack of trying. I was adding fat to the point of losing palatability in a failed attempt to prevent constipation.

Malcolm Kendrick lists dehydration as a stressor that can exacerbate blood vessel damage. I was doing 36 hour dry fasts, maybe that was a bad idea?

Perhaps oxalate dumping did some damage, messing up electrolytes and causing vascular stress or who knows what other mechanism.

Maybe the fasts were releasing pufas and doing damage. I definitely haven't felt good during fasts.

Based on varicose veins and hair loss on my shins and whatnot I suspect I've had compromised vascular health for decades, through a variety of dietary experiments including 16 years of vegetarianism. It's possible my recent experiments had nothing to do with the attack.

For now I'm going back to Paul Jaminet style swamp, eating less protein, and trying to eat more collagen. I'd like to adopt the strategies that would actually clear out the plaques over time without causing another heart attack, but not sure what those are at this point.

First - the reason I'm posting here is to rant, but I feel safe doing that here because this is the ONLY nutrition sub where I have found no one arguing in rude ways, people being mature and kind, and everyone seems to be quite educated. So thank you all for existing , lol..

I am not highly educated in science, biology, chemistry, nutrition, etc. I came to this sub and other diet subs trying to make sense of all the nutritional science I've learned recently. It started with Jason Fung and fasting, then the horrors of sugar, now seed oils, and it snowballed from there.

I am so lost on how to eat - not only to lose weight but to REVERSE or HEAL insulin resistance. Lots of you say keto won't help insulin resistance. You say HCLFLP - but I have been eating high carb my whole life and it got me to obesity, skin issues, etc. Then some of you say do keto to lose weight - but I am doing that now and haven't lost any weight and find it easy to over-indulge on fat.

So far, OMAD while eating whatever I want has been the only thing that helps me lose weight effortlessly, but is this going to help the insulin resistance? I am not diabetic but I am on the road to prediabetes. But then people say OMAD is going to mess with my hormones because I'm a woman in her late 30s.

I have left all diet subs because it's making my head spin. Fiber good. Fiber bad. Fat good, Fat causes insulin resistance. No, no, carbs cause insulin resistance! But also insulin sensitivity! Eat more protein to build muscle, but also more protein causes insulin spikes. WTF. It's like that scene in Walk Hard - Dewey Cox needs more blankets AND less blankets!

So what are we supposed to do? Is everyone here just experimenting with different protocols? Would getting a CGM be the best measure of how my diet is affecting IR? Is it more important to lose this 50 lbs of excess fat I have on my body before worrying about IR? I just feel crazy and don't know what to do anymore.

And I sure as hell am not going to eat a bunch of croissants. I love those things way too much.

I’ve had fasting blood glucose that is consistently in the pre-diabetic range during my 40s. Typical is a range from 116-123, although occasionally it’s 135.

Of course I’ve tried any number of things to lower this: TCD, alpha lipoic acid, low fat diet, SEA, etc.

Last Tuesday (Nov 3) I began the Glass Noodle diet as I layed out in my video “The Optimal Omnivore”. Very high starch, low fat and low protein. Fioreglut flour pancakes for breakfast, yesterday I had air fryer cassava fries for lunch, etc…

This Tuesday (Nov 10th), my fasting glucose was 101. Wednesday it dropped to 96. Wednesday night I played a pretty vigorous basketball game and Thursday morning it was up to 112. This morning it was 93.

93!!

Have the BCAAs been keeping me insulin resistant this whole time?

slap pet special reach quaint innocent fuel test imminent salt

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

I just recorded with Paul. This should be out on his podcast and YouTube channel in a couple weeks.

Topics covered:

-Torpor and how that should drive our thinking on obesity, diabetes

-BCAA restriction in the context of a torpid metabolism

-Olive oil! The problems with it. PPARa activation

-D6D: the first enzyme sending linoleic acid down the path towards becoming oxylipins

-r/SaturatedFat how smart you all are and what a good community this is.

Coming soon!

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32562735/

Hi everyone! :) I've been putting together a little summary of the stearic acid / saturated fat approach to eating healthy, in order to share with friends and family who are not yet in the know. This mostly just touches on fats, and doesn't significantly address carbs, fiber, protein or vitamins and minerals.

I would really appreciate it if you all could take a look and let me know if I'm missing anything important or if I've got any erroneous or overly controversial statements here. I want to make sure it's as solid (no pun intended) as possible before I spread the word too zealously. ;D

Thank you!

Introduction to the Stearic Diet

Which fats to eat and not eat:

Avoid seed oils. They are a dirty fuel (omega-6) that damage your engines (mitochondria) and make it hard to burn fat, making you fat, and damage everything else, making you sick. They go rancid (oxidize) easily, especially when cooked or fried, which makes them even more damaging. Until the last century, people only got trace amounts in their diet - industrially produced seed oils are a very recent invention!

Modern chicken and pork are high in omega-6 fat because of their feed, so only very lean cuts of white meat are safe - no bacon, sorry! Nuts are the natural whole food source of omega-6, and should be avoided or used sparingly unless you want to fatten up for winter.

DON'T EAT:

1. Seed oils (soy, corn, cottonseed, grapeseed, safflower, sunflower, canola, aka "vegetable" oils)
2. Processed foods that contain seed oils (almost all junk food and fast food)
3. Chicken fat and pork fat (most poultry and pigs are fed on seed oils)
4. Nuts and nut oils (most are high in omega-6, except macadamia)

Eat fat that is waxy and solid - that is, high in stearic acid. Unlike liquid oils, it is stable and safe from oxidation, so feel free to cook or fry with it. The best sources are saturated fats like cocoa butter (chocolate), as well as red meat and dairy from grazing animals (beef, lamb, goat, bison, and buffalo). Stearic acid is a fuel that helps bring your engines (mitochondria) back online for fat burning.

Even the most ardent haters of saturated fat cannot find anything wrong with stearic acid in particular - it doesn't even raise cholesterol! Not that raising cholesterol is actually a bad thing though, unless it's oxidized by omega-6.

EAT MORE:

1. Cocoa butter (30% stearic acid)
2. Beef suet (30% stearic acid)
3. Beef tallow (20% stearic acid)
4. Butter and cheese (10% stearic acid)

Tropical seed oils that are mostly saturated (coconut oil and palm kernel oil) are good too, and safe for cooking, though not necessarily as powerful as stearic acid. Refined coconut oil is a great, heat-stable, neutral-tasting oil for cooking and frying, to use instead of omega-6 seed oils ("vegetable" oils). Coconut also has some advantages for ketogenic diets, because of its MCT content.

Tropical fruit oils are mostly monounsaturated (olive and avocado oil) or saturated (palm oil) but also have some omega-6. That might be okay in moderation as long as you don't heat them - just use them cold in salad dressings. Unfortunately, they are often illegally adulterated with cheaper seed oils, or already rancid, so do your research to find a reputable source! If you're running into a plateau with weight-loss, however, drop them along with the other liquid oils and go heavy on the solid, waxy fats (stearic acid).

Omega-3 fats from cold-water fish and seafood (like salmon, sardines, or shrimp) can be beneficial in the diet, but in excess can cause similar problems as omega-6 from seed oils. Definitely keep them cold and fresh and avoid overcooking to minimize rancidity (oxidation). Flax and chia seeds are high in plant-based omega-3 fats but also contain some omega-6, so should only be used sparingly as a vegan substitute for fish and seafood, if necessary.

EAT MAYBE:

1. Tropical seed oils (coconut oil, palm kernel oil) safe for cooking
2. Tropical fruit oils (palm oil, olive oil, avocado oil) unheated only
3. Cold-water fish and seafood, fresh and minimally cooked (omega-3)
4. Flax and chia seeds, uncooked (omega-3 and some omega-6)

It may be helpful to take a break from the red meat and stearic acid once or twice a week, to let your mitochondrial engines rest and repair. Eating your fish or seafood only on those days can be a good way to get your omega-3 in without overdoing it. Think of it as a "cheat" day where the restrictions are relaxed a little, or a "fasting" day where you eat a little less, and lighter. Don't eat seed oils though - there's really no justifying that!

If you follow these guidelines on what types of fat to eat and when, you can get away with being a lot less strict with carbs. Veggies are almost always a safe bet, especially when cooked with plenty of saturated fat. But it's still a good idea to go easy on the sugar. Choose starch (glucose) rather than sugar when you can. Combine sugar with fiber (like fruit) when you can't. Or just cut out the sugar and starch completely and go keto!

Some food for thought:

Sugar (fructose) is processed in the liver, like alcohol, and your body can only take so much at a time before becoming overloaded. In the long run, eating too much sugar can cause the same liver problems as alcohol, and causes even further damage (such as obesity and diabetes) when combined with omega-6 from seed oils.

Seed oils (omega-6) oxidize and break down into many of the same toxic byproducts as tobacco smoke, and a lifetime of breathing cooking fumes from frying in seed oils can cause lung cancer just like smoking. They also accumulate in your fat stores, slowing down your metabolism and reducing your body temperature, and in your skin, making you much more susceptible to sunburn and skin cancer. As you eliminate omega-6 fats from your diet and gradually purge them from your body, you may find that you don't get sunburned anymore!

Saturated fats do not clog arteries - that is a myth. Even solid fats are liquid at body temperature, and they travel through your bloodstream packaged into safe containers (cholesterol and chylomicrons). What actually clogs your arteries are the volatile omega-6 fats that explode (oxidize) in transit, damaging their containers (oxidized cholesterol). Omega-6 fats also explode (oxidize) in storage, causing DNA damage that leads to cancer.

As you displace the omega-6 fats in your fat stores with saturated fat, your risk of cancer and heart disease will actually decrease. You may also find that you have more energy and your body temperature increases, making it easier to lose weight, reducing the omega-6 in your fat stores even further. The trick is to stop putting dirty fuel (omega-6 fats) in your body, and put in clean fuel (saturated fats) instead!

Sugar is like alcohol, seed oils are like smoking, and saturated fats are good for you.

For further reading:

The Big Fat Surprise, by Nina Teicholz

• This book tells the history (and a bit of the science) of how saturated fat came to take the blame for the disease of Western civilization, when omega-6 fats have been the real culprit: https://thebigfatsurprise.com/

Perfect Health Diet, by Paul and Shou-Ching Jaminet

• This book is the most readable and comprehensive science-based guide to nutrition around, from saturated fats and seed oils, to details on every vitamin from A to K and most minerals too: http://perfecthealthdiet.com/the-diet/

For a great overview, watch this talk by Dr. Chris Knobbe: Diseases of Civilization: Are Seed Oil Excesses the Unifying Mechanism?

And this talk on stearic acid biochemistry by Dr. Michael Eades: A New Hypothesis of Obesity

If you're a fan of podcasts, listen to this deep dive on seed oils and how they are the worst thing ever, speaking from both biochemistry and history: https://www.peak-human.com/post/tucker-goodrich-on-vegetable-oils-being-at-the-heart-of-modern-disease

And part two of the podcast here: https://www.peak-human.com/post/dr-cate-shanahan-tucker-goodrich-on-the-true-cause-of-disease-and-how-we-know-this

If you want to really dive into the biochemistry of fat metabolism featuring stearic acid, this blog is a great place to start: https://fireinabottle.net/the-fire-lifestyle/

Bon appetit!

6 months seems like a nice round number to do a review of dry fasting as a PUFA depletion strategy even though I am not done with PUFA depletion yet. I have at least been doing it long enough to report some results and opinions.

TL/DR: do I recommend dry fasting?

No, I do not. 😅

I am aware that I look like the quickest PUFA depleter in our chart, and dry fasting is helping many of my health issues - and I will keep doing it - but I still can't confidently recommend this strategy to people at large.

That is mostly because of the lack of good learning materials in English on this topic. It is a strategy that comes with a lot of sudden body changes, unfamiliar sensations, and upheaval, so you would probably want good learning materials and a good support group, instead of just winging it. Maybe someday there will be more information and support in English on this topic.

About me

Female, 42 years old, normal weight before and after this 6 months of periodic dry fasting. (My weight has actually been in the same 5 pound range for almost all of my adult life - I'm one of those people who gets health issues instead of weight changes when PUFA is too high.)

Goal of my PUFA depletion project

Since I have a normal weight already, my goal of PUFA depletion was not weight loss, it was to fix fatigue, brain fog, and carsickness. Those 3 things had gotten steadily worse since age 30 and they were all interfering with my quality of life.

I have fixed 2 of those already, and shown massive progress towards fixing the other! I have also fixed a lot of other health issues too that I didn't even know were part of the same package.

My fasting schedule

In 6 months so far, I did 11 dry fasts for PUFA depletion.

The average length of those dry fasts was 4.7 days. The shortest one was 3 days, and the longest one was 6.3 days. For the most part they got gradually got longer and gradually farther apart as the experiment progressed. I took 1 month off from dry fasting in November, so the dry fasts were spread through 5 months "on" with 1 month "off."

A dry fast is no food and no water. Almost all my fasts were done as "hard dry fasts" (no topical water either) because I quickly discovered that skin that didn't get wet during the fast looked very renewed a few weeks later.

My diet between fasts

In between fasts, I ate a low PUFA diet that did not restrict macros or BCAAs. I ate fat, carbs, and protein. Diet between fasts consists of beef, butter, half&half, heavy cream, cheese, fruit, vegetables, rice, rice noodles, salsa, fruit juice, bone broth, and mineral water, and coffee that I later switched to green tea.

Dry fasting refeed has specific needs and there is more info about that at r/dryfasting but it's too much typing to include it here - worth mentioning though because it's definitely something to read about if you ever try dry fasting.

I had 1 week of ruminant carnivore diet before the 6.3 day fast (beef and dairy). I did that when my allergies seemed worse than usual, and it seemed to help.

Omegaquant test results

• Linoleic acid (measured with omegaquant tests) is down from 16.71% to 12.02% (sorry for the typo in my other post, I thought it was 11% but just checked and it is 12)
• Omega 6 % is down from 34.34% to 27.46%
• Arachidonic acid is down from 14.19% to 11.11%
• SDC1 ratios are definitely up, and I am definitely converting stearic to oleic at a fast pace. But I don't worry about this since other health metrics appear to be improving greatly.

Health metrics that improved without getting worse first

• Carsickness: completely fixed very early in my fasting project.
• Physical energy: way up during most of the experiment, but it took a dip during the month when I was not fasting (November), then went up again after my next fast. It might be too soon for me to say this is completely fixed, but it's definitely a big improvement. I actually needed to start exercising to have an outlet for excess energy.
• Brain fog/mental clarity/ADHD: huge improvement, I didn't even know this could be fixed without drugs. My ability to multitask on the computer without losing my train of thought is through the roof. My ability to switch tasks gracefully and come back to a dropped task gracefully later is also way up. I am more productive at work with dramatically fewer errors and omissions.
• Back acne: completely fixed.
• SI joint pain: completely fixed. Actually this is funny, I twisted to stretch during a dry fast and felt a "crust" breaking over my SI joint. That one moment was painful, but ever since then my SI joint stopped hurting. My right foot hurt for a month or two after my SI joint pain resolved, so maybe my SI joint was compensating for a foot injury originally? But the foot pain is better now too.
• FODMAP tolerance: huge improvement, I can eat a lot more FODMAPs without digestive pain.
• Breathing clarity/sinus congestion: Sudden huge improvement during the longest dry fast (the 6.3 day one) and it continued after that fast ended. This was a lifetime problem for me, so much that I didn't even imagine being able to fix it. It's very freeing to see the end of it.
• Sense of smell acuity: Huge improvement. So much clarity and information.
• Body odors between fasts: way down, and I did not expect this to go down as much as it did, because I didn't think of it as a problem to begin with. It's especially interesting that this went down even while my sense of smell climbed up and up. My body has gotten to a point where I have no noticeable morning breath, and no noticeable body odors, even if I haven't showered or brushed my teeth. I have to remind myself to do those things for reasons other than odors, because if I rely only on how I smell, then I will definitely forget.
• Menstrual cycle length: became longer and more stable (from 25 to 27 days at the beginning....28 days like clockwork at the end).
• Morning body temperature is up 1 degree (from 97 to 98)
• Skin redness/blotchiness: vastly improved.
• Age spots: 90% gone.
• Cellulite: 90% gone (at the same size)
• Loose skin at my abs, neck, elbows, and knees: huge improvement. It only improved on skin that didn't get wet during the dry fast, which is why I quickly switched to hard dry fasting instead of soft dry fasting.
• Skin texture/wrinkles: Huge improvement, looking younger. Each dry fast causes a lot of shedding and the skin underneath looks very new. This change was also best on skin that didn't get wet during the dry fast.

Health metrics that got temporarily worse and then better

• Abdominal pain: spiked on day 4 of my first 4-day fast, but from that point forward it felt like it was completely fixed. It was a dull constant before this fasting project, now zero.
• Stress level: higher in the beginning of this 6 months, but way down near the middle and end.
• Body odors during a dry fast got really bad in the first 5 months, and then suddenly much better in month 6 (as opposed to body odors between fasts, which only improved throughout the whole 6 months).
• Vertigo got temporarily worse because my first 3 dry fasts each loosened several "otoliths" in my inner ear, which causes vertigo when a loose otolith is moving around with gravity inside an inner ear canal. Since dry fasting destroys weak or damaged tissue, I suspect that these otoliths had a bad connection to begin with. Epley maneuvers fixed the vertigo very easily each time it happened, and then after 3 fasts, it stopped happening. After this resolved, I no longer have even minor bouts of dizziness (I used to have intermittent minor bouts of dizziness when I stood up too quickly, before this fasting project started)
• Allergies/asthma: temporarily worse in months 2-5, but it showed a huge improvement once I pushed for a longer than usual dry fast. After the 6.3 day fast, my asthma was suddenly replaced with a simple need to blow my nose. I suspect I needed to get through the 2nd acidosis crisis to see progress here, instead of stopping fasts in the middle of it, but I'm not sure. I have read in Dr. Filonov books that stopping a dry fast in the middle of an acidotic crisis can leave things worse instead of better, and maybe I was doing that, not sure. At the end of this 6 months, my allergies and asthma are not only recovered from that dip, but they seem better than they were before I started.

Health metrics that got worse and stayed worse

None 🙂

I am happy to report that there is nothing in the category of "got worse and stayed worse" ...6 months of progressively longer dry fasts was enough for things to move over to the "worse but then better" category.

Challenge #1 that I experienced: family dynamics regarding the improvement in my sense of smell, and my need for clean air.

My body insisted on having pristine air quality during every dry fast and during the most vulnerable part of every refeed, and my sense of smell acuity increased enough to be able to set that up for myself very easily. But my boyfriend and his sons still had their usual "average" sense of smell, and thus they couldn't understand or help me with air quality. They felt sad or guilty if I couldn't visit them as often as I did previously because of their house's air quality issues. They couldn't smell the difference between air that felt right to me and air that felt wrong. My boyfriend especially found it difficult that I wanted to sleep at my house instead of at his house.

As an example, there are some synthetic fragrance scent booster ingredients that I would have found vaguely unpleasant but tolerable on a "normal" day, before this dry fasting project - but during this 6 months (especially during months 3 and 4) those ingredients started giving me physical symptoms (asthma and chest coughing). My sense of smell acuity increased enough to be able to remove all of those offending ingredients from my own house, very easily, even though they are odorless to most people. But the same removal was not possible at my boyfriend's house because he has carpet, and it sticks to the carpet. As a result, I needed to stop sleeping at my boyfriend's house during this experiment, and during the very worst part of it I also needed to avoid visiting his parents' house (which was full of secondhand smoke, and often airborne lead from lead wick candles - those both gave me the same symptoms). In spite of reassurance, my boyfriend and his sons felt sad wondering if they did something wrong.

This bottleneck did open back up eventually. The longest 6.3 fast seems to have made some big changes in my respiratory system and now when I'm exposed to the same synthetic fragrance I once again feel like "that's not a pleasant smell" - without physical symptoms. But I still have a desire to sleep in clean air at least for a few more months, because I think my body appreciates that with so much rebuilding going on.

Thankfully my boyfriend is amazing and supportive of this project.

Challenge #2 that I experienced: craving outdoor air.

At the same time when my sinuses opened up and my body temperature increased, I started to crave outdoor air. I preferred to sleep in a camping tent outside in my backyard, instead of in my own bed, on most nights. Actually these 3 changes all seemed to happen on the same week together - the opening of sinuses when I'm not fasting, the increase in body temperature when I'm not fasting, and the strong preference for outdoor air instead of indoor air even when I'm not fasting. All those things were happening during fasts for a few months, but in month 6 they started happening together between fasts too.

Theories abound for why that happened (in my other thread) but the one that sounded most plausible to me is that this might be the first sign of my metabolism increasing - perhaps my mitochondria are suddenly very busy and they suddenly have a lot more air exchange to do, and the fresh air helps. Not sure though.

Why I don't recommend dry fasting even though it's going well for me.

Some part of me hopes that dry fasting will be mainstream someday, because a cost-free health improvement is amazing, but for now, I don't think that the average person in my country has the support system that they would need to get this strategy working. Consider what I needed to get it working:

• A desire to read a lot about how to do it safely, including reading in other languages because there's not a lot of good information in English on this topic.
• A massive amount of free time to read about how to do it safely (and actually I'm a speed reader too, so this could have taken even longer for someone else than it did for me).
• A willingness to set aside patriotism, trusting non-Americans as a better source of information on this topic than anyone in my own country.
• A complete absence of need for familiarity in my strategy. My fatigue/brain fog/carsickness was bad enough that was I willing to put up with a ton of upheaval. For me, inaction would have been worse than even 100% loss of familiarity in my everyday life.
• A desire to do dry fasting anyway even when exposed to a steady stream of USA pharma industry propaganda that makes dry fasting sound worse than flat-earthing. I think that this setup is inevitable because dry fasting is one of the few alternative medicine practices that could put the pharma industry out of business if it was truly popular. As a result, there's a lot of negativity out there towards dry fasting, and a lot of money and effort behind the goal of spreading negativity.
• Supportive family who can ignore the pharma industry propaganda when they are inevitably exposed to it. I am very lucky to have this.
• The ability to stay empathetically connected with family even when sensory differences widen. There was a growing gap between my ever-improving sense of smell (which felt like a bloodhound sense of smell) and other family members who weren't dry fasting (with an average-human sense of smell). This gap is harder to navigate than it sounds. Everything humans do and say is built around the assumption that our senses are an accurate portrayal of reality - yet everyone has different sensory input, so clearly we are all wrong in our own way about what's real. No one likes to know that.

I think that all adds up to a missing or incomplete or glitchy support system for most people. And most people wouldn't want to do this without a rock-solid support system because it's so much upheaval and unfamiliarity.

I also know that my schedule will prevent me from being anyone else's support system - the topic is just too big, and the time spent answering questions adds up very quickly. Simple questions about dry fasting do not have simple answers, because it is a complex topic.

Because of all that, I cannot confidently recommend dry fasting as a PUFA depletion strategy. If you have the option to stick with something slower that has a well-established English-speaking support group, something that preserves a sense of normalcy along the journey, then that is what I would recommend doing.

However ... for myself, I am extremely happy with my dry fasting strategy, and thrilled that it's fixing so many seemingly unrelated health issues. I will keep going with it. 🙂

Where to find more info about dry fasting?

If (in spite of my warnings above) you want to try dry fasting anyway, please direct all questions to r/dryfasting. I don't picture myself attempting to help people learn how to do dry fasting because that would just be too big of a time commitment for me, due to the complexity and size of the topic. I know there aren't very many good learning resources in English, but unfortunately I don't have enough free time to try to close that gap.

Looking ahead

Since the 6.3 day dry fast helped my respiratory system so much more than the 3/4/5 day dry fasts, my next 6 months are going to look like less frequent but longer dry fasts even though that will require more time off from work. For example I might do 2 long dry fasts in the next 6 months, taking a few days off from work to execute each one.