Attention Data Lovers!

Confession: I am a dinosaur.

I am not tech-savvy, and other than my phone and my computer, I have almost zero electronic gadgets, gizmos, and doohickeys, and cannot for the life of me relate at all to people who line up outside electronics stores the night before a new product is released from their favorite company just so they can be the very first in their family or friend group to get their grubby mitts on the latest and greatest. That I figured out how to create even this sad little blog is nothing short of a miracle. (This is really pathetic, considering I graduated from Carnegie Mellon, which is one of the foremost computer engineering universities in the world. Alas, I studied creative writing there, which is why the writing part of my site is so much better than the aesthetics and functionality.)

BUT: this post is not about me. It’s about you. Specifically, it’s about those of you who are tech savvy, and also those of you who are data junkies.

I am not a data junkie. I don’t have spreadsheets, apps, and wearable devices loaded with numbers and metrics about my body. I don’t own blood or breath ketone meters, nor a heart rate monitor, nor a blood pressure cuff, nor a Fitbit, nor a fancy-schmancy watch that keeps track of running pace. Like I said: di-no-saur.

HOWEVER! I know many of you, dear readers, are not living like it’s 1987 (except my phone and computer are both way smaller now), and you do enjoy employing the technology available to track all sorts of health-related data.

With this in mind, allow me introduce you to Heads Up Health. The people at Heads Up Health have asked me to let you know about the very handy one-stop-shop they’ve created for you to keep track of all your data in one convenient place.

Metabolic Theory of Cancer: Speculation on the Causes of Cancer -- and How to Mitigate Them (Pt.5B)

Okay!

I left off last time saying that we have two big issues to address with regard to hypoxia as a cause or exacerbating factor in cancer: 

1. What causes tissue to become hypoxic?
2. Is there a role for hyperbaric oxygen therapy in fighting cancer?

  

Let’s tackle them in order.

To be honest with you, I still don’t know which comes first: low oxygen, or mitochondrial dysfunction. The fact is, even when there’s plenty of oxygen available, if the mitochondria are malfunctioning, they can’t use it. But what if what’s causing the mitochondria to malfunction is insufficient oxygen? (I told you last time this stuff is complicated!)

It almost doesn’t matter, right? The bottom line is, whether the tissue is hypoxic or not, the mitochondria are not using whatever oxygen might be present. (Well, they’re using some of it. Remember, kids, when it comes to biology and biochemistry, there are very rarely any absolutes, yes or no, on or off. Things aren't binary, but rather, there's a balancing act. Even cancer cells have some mitochondria that are okay; it’s just that the majority of them are messed up.)

I just have a hard time wrapping my head around it all. Think about angiogenesis: the creation of blood vessels specifically so that the cancerous tissue ensures it has a steady supply of fuel and nutrients. But what does blood carry besides fuel and nutrients? OXYGEN. So you would think that angiogenesis would give cancer cells more oxygen, not less. So going one step further, this being the case, it seems like the mitochondrial dysfunction comes first, because theoretically, there should be sufficient oxygen delivery to the cancer cells, what with all those blood vessels they created for their own nefarious purposes. So there is sufficient oxygen (“normoxia”), yet we have hypoxia-inducible factors out the yin-yang upregulating all sorts of nasty pathways and reactions in these cells to keep themselves alive because they think they’re hypoxic. And the reason they think they’re hypoxic is because the mitochondria aren’t using the oxygen. (That’s my logic, anyway. I told you there was going to be a lot of wild speculation here, and so it begins.)

Metabolic Theory of Cancer: Speculation on the Causes of Cancer -- and How to Mitigate Them (Pt.5A)

Graphic adapted from Seyfried et al., 2015

OH. EM. GEE!!!!!

It’s baaa-aaaaack!

Today is June 1, 2016. Looking back through the blog archives, I saw that the previous post in this series on the metabolic theory of cancer was published on June 1, 2015. Yes, kids, it’s been a year. A full year! An entire year to the day. If you have been waiting and waiting (and waiting!) for me to get back to this and address some key concepts we haven’t gotten to yet, believe me, nobody wanted me to get back to this more than I did. I absolutely did not plan on it taking a year. But alas. Hopefully, in that time, you’ve learned a thing or two about insulin, stubborn fat loss, and the use of ketogenic diets for Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological conditions. In fact, I am in the process of adding a new installment to the “ITIS/It’s the Insulin, Stupid” series, but when I saw that I was coming up on the one-year anniversary of neglecting the cancer series, I knew I had to get my rear in gear and just DO IT. I really wanted to do the insulin post first, but considering the date, I thought it would be apropos for me to do this one instead.

Also, just to let you know, since the writing of that last post, I have had the honor of meeting Drs. Seyfried, D’Agostino, and Poff in person. {Squee!!}  I also got to meet Dr. Cunnane, Dr. Newport, Dr. Rho, and Dr. Maffetone. Holy moly…it was a nonstop conference of metabolism rock stars.

I am most definitely going to get to the mamma-jamma, granddaddy of all topics we’ve been waiting for in this cancer series—the ketogenic diet—but please be patient. I’ve very recently had more work stuff come up (in a good way), and I am feeling a bit overwhelmed. I will write about ketosis. I can’t promise when, exactly, that will happen, but I promise it won’t take a year. (Maybe just a couple weeks, considering I’m already working on it.)  ;-)

If you’re new to my blog and have no idea what’s going on right now, the series I’ve written on the metabolic theory of cancer is a “fan favorite” – at least, among the people who like to geek out on the science with me. The cancer series is representative of when my blog becomes a free course in (very basic) biochemistry and physiology, and is peppered with links and quotes from the scientific literature. If you prefer my rants, shakedowns of food labels, and other casual-type posts, no prob! Whatever floats your boat. But for those of you who need to kill lots of time at your desk job, or who perhaps need help falling asleep, you might want to start way back at the beginning and work your way toward today’s post. (Actually, that’s sarcasm. The truth is, I think this stuff is fascinating, and perhaps some of my best work. I swear, that hexokinase 2 stuff STILL blows my mind.)

Since it has been a year (!!) since the last installment, I’ll make it easy for you and list all the posts in order, from first to most recent: 

1. Introduction
2. Cells Behaving Badly
3. Cellular Energy Generation 1 - Glycolysis
4. Cellular Energy Generation 2 - Mighty Mitochondria (Krebs Cycle, Electron Transport Chain)
5. Mitochondrial Dysfunction 1
6. Mitochondrial Dysfunction 2 - They ARE Broken
7. Glycolysis Run Amok & Mutant Hexokinase
8. Aerobic Fermentation (a.k.a. "The Warburg Effect")
9. Cancer Cells are Sugar Junkies
10. Mutations vs. Mitochondria
11. Cancer as a Protective Mechanism
12. Speculation on the Causes of Cancer (Pt.1)
13. Video Lesson! (Thomas Seyfried, PhD)
14. Speculation on the Causes of Cancer -- and How to Mitigate Risk (Pt.2)
15. Speculation on the Causes of Cancer -- and How to Mitigate Them (Pt.3 - Viruses)
16. Speculation on the Causes of Cancer -- and How to Mitigate Them (Pt.4 - Carcinogens)

Buckle up and hang on tight, everyone. HERE WE GO!

Food for Thought Friday: Modern Medicine Rant (Part 2!)

“I know many physicians who enthusiastically endorse a low carbohydrate diet for many medical conditions. The great majority of them have experienced personal health benefits from actually adopting the diet for themselves and that includes me. Although physicians are taught to ignore anecdotal evidence, it is difficult to do when it applies to oneself.”

                          -Keith Runyan, MD, Why Your Doctor May Question a Low Carb Diet

I have the utmost respect for doctors. Not all of them, but most. Getting through medical school, an internship, a residency, and more, is certainly no joke. Heck, just preparing for the MCAT is a challenge. Medical education and subsequent professional life is not for the lazy. There’s a reason I’m a CNS and not an MD. (Yes, I recently earned the CNS designation. Woohoo! I am now among the ranks of such greats as Jeffrey Bland, PhD, the founder of the Institute for Functional Medicine.)

And while I envy the paycheck and the cachet that come along with being an MD (much more impressive at a dinner party than being some lowlife nutritionist), I don’t envy the actual tasks that come along with being a doctor. This is particularly true for those who work in emergency rooms or emergency situations, so I’m not talking just doctors, but nurses, orderlies, paramedics, EMTs, cops, firemen…the whole crew. At my old office job, if I made a mistake, maybe the printer got jammed, or I spilled coffee on my keyboard. (Or accidentally hit “reply all” when sending a particularly scathing email about the boss, hehheh.) In an ER, if someone makes a mistake, someone dies. Someone’s kid bleeds to death. I can’t imagine being halfway through my lunch when someone gets rushed through the doors with a limb three-quarters of the way severed off, or with some kind of freaky implement impaled somewhere you really don’t want anything—freaky or not—to be impaled. I would not want to be tasked with walking out of an operating room to tell a family that their child “didn’t make it.”  

Bottom line: modern allopathic medical professionals see and do things on a daily basis that I cannot imagine in my scariest, don’t-want-to-take-responsibility-for-this nightmares. While I wish I were cool under pressure, and I have lots of daydreams in which I am a totally confident, take-charge-and-save-the-day kind of person, the truth is, I do not want to be the person responsible for knowing exactly what to do in a matter of seconds when someone is literally going to die unless I remember the correct procedure. 

I love medical doctors. Love em!

In the right context, that is. When it comes to trauma, please, for the love of all that’s holy, get me to the nearest modern, big-city, suped-up technology hospital you can. Do not—repeat, do not—call a naturopath, or a chiropractor, or an osteopath, or a nutritionist. I want someone to stop the bleeding, stop the pain, and stop them now.

Really, MDs are pretty awesome. (Especially ones like this, who get it.)

So why do I rail against them so much?  

Food for Thought Friday: Modern Medicine Rant

Pop Quiz:

The failure of institutions such as the American Diabetes Association, American Heart Association, and American Medical Association not just to acknowledge the undeniable efficacy of carbohydrate restriction for myriad chronic health complications, but also their failure to do what they should be doing—which is shouting it from the rooftops louder than any ol’ no-name blogger, and actively encouraging people to give it a try—is the result of which of the following:

A)  Stupidity

B)  Willful Ignorance

C)  Conspiracy

D)  Narcissism

E)  Malpractice 

F)  All of the above

Yeah. You can see where today’s rant is headed.

Food for Thought Friday: Pay the Farmer Now, or Pay the Doctor ... When, Exactly?

When well-meaning acquaintances mock us for spending more money than they do for food, those of us who take pride in buying, cooking, and eating whole, unprocessed, real foods are fond of saying, “Pay the farmer now, or pay the doctor later.” Meaning, if people don’t pony up a little extra cash for better quality food now, they’ll end up paying even more in the future, in the form of medical bills. But is this actually true? If people spend decades putting garbage down their pieholes and end up with some of the “diseases of civilization,” do they really end up all that much worse off, financially?

For the sake of keeping this post to a somewhat reasonable length, let’s stick solely to the financial burden of diet- and lifestyle-induced illness, and we’ll table the “cost” of missed work time, fatigue, illness, chronic pain, and overall reduced quality of life for another time. (But let’s go ahead and acknowledge that these other issues are arguably more important than one’s bank account balance.)

ITIS -- It's the Insulin, Stupid (pt 8/8)

Well, here we are, folks! The 8^th and final installment of the crazy journey that began way back when we looked at Dr. Joseph Kraft’s 5-hour glucose tolerance tests with insulin assay. You remember those, right? The ones that suggested far more people are in the early stages of diabetes and insulin resistance than anyone ever would have guessed, based on their “normal” fasting glucose and hemoglobin A1c results.

In case anyone’s stumbling upon this series for the first time, here are links to the seven posts that preceded this one:

• Part 1: Introduction to insulin resistance and the work of Dr. Kraft: What is diabetes in-situ?
• Part 2: Health consequences of hyperinsulinemia & hyperglycemia unrelated to body weight.
• Part 3: Deep-dive into the pancreas and the balancing act between insulin and GLUCAGON.
• Part 4: The role of insulin in the gain & loss of body fat.
• Part 5: More on insulin & the regulation of body fat—how do different eating patterns (such as intermittent fasting and carbohydrate reduction) affect insulin, and what does that mean for body fat and energy levels?
• Part 6: The concept of “normal weight obesity” or TOFI—thin outside, fat inside, and what this means for overall health. (Summary: “thin” doesn’t automatically mean healthy.) Also: how come some people don’t become overweight when they’re insulin resistant?
• Part 7: “Calories in, calories out” and “eat less, move more.” Are these sound bytes the least bit helpful? In a word, no. If you have even the smallest appreciation for the complexity of the biochemical regulation of human metabolism, in general, and body fat, in particular, then you will agree that these phrases are laughably simplistic and one step shy of being completely meaningless.

Okay! Let’s get down to business.

Having covered some of the gnarly health conditions and debilitating downstream effects of insulin resistance (IR), hyperinsulinemia, and hyperglycemia—which can affect your eyes, your ears, your brain, your kidneys, your heart & blood vessels, your nerves, and your man parts or lady bits, not to mention make you the three Fs: fat, fatigued, and foggy-headed—it’s time to address perhaps the most important questions of all...

ITIS -- It's the Insulin, Stupid (pt 2/8)

Warning: This is a ridiculously long post. I was going to break it up into two, but I figured, what’s the difference between one really long post, and two semi-long ones? You can always read a couple paragraphs and then come back later if you don’t have time to read it all at once.

Also: My blog has a very eclectic audience. I have physicians, PhDs, and others well-educated in biochem and A&P reading this, but I think the bulk of my readers are interested laypeople. I try to tailor my posts to the laypeople, keeping in mind that they are of above-average intelligence, and certainly above-average knowledge about all this low-carb, high-fat, Paleo, and ancestral health "stuff." Just wanted to remind everyone of the diverse audience here, because this post, in particular, contains simplified explanations of complex processes, and I apologize if any of the pros find themselves bored. :-/ 

OKAY! Now we come to the next part of why all of this insulin stuff is so important. (Missed the first part? Click here. And you’ll notice I’ve changed the title of this post to say it’s part 2 of I-don’t-know-how-many. In starting to write part 3, I realized this is going to be more like 5 or 6. I am learning new things about this every day that I feel are important enough to write about, and the number of posts it will take to include them keeps rising.) 

Here we go...

ITIS -- It's the Insulin, Stupid (pt 1 of 8)

As you can imagine, I spend a lot of time educating myself about health, nutrition, and food. Whether I’m reading papers in the scientific and medical literature, keeping up with posts by intelligent bloggers, or learning more about human anatomy and physiology, a good portion of my week is devoted to ensuring that, as a nutritionist and blogger, I know what I’m talking about, and I provide my clients and readers with reliable information. There’s so much hashing and rehashing of old news in this field, and you can’t walk five feet without bumping into a dead horse that’s been beaten over and over—and over—again. So it isn’t often that something comes along that really blows my mind. (Like this. I am still fascinated by this.) Once in a while, something that’s actually very simple, and which should be totally obvious, blows my mind, if only because it makes me think about things in ways I’d never considered before.

With the help of some very cool people in the low-carb, high-fat (LCHF) world, I have been introduced to a new concept—well, new to me, but certainly not “new” at all—and I’d like to share it with you. There’s a lot to talk about, but the overall theme boils down to this: by focusing almost exclusively on blood glucose, the medical and nutrition professions have been missing the boat on a much larger, much more insidious problem: insulin.

As you know, blood glucose and insulin are intimately related. It’s hard to discuss one without the other. But when was the last time your basic bloodwork panel included a measurement of your insulin levels? Have you ever had a doctor look at anything but your fasting glucose and maybe your A1c if (s)he was concerned about your blood sugar management? (Never mind that the A1c isn’t even included in a typical blood panel. You often have to specifically request it.) If you’ve ever been the victim of experienced an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT), did your doctor measure your insulin levels, or only your blood glucose?

With a single-minded focus on glucose, glucose, glucose, we have distracted ourselves from what is really driving the ship in type 2 diabetes (T2D), metabolic syndrome, Alzheimer’s disease, and many more conditions that we’ll explore in detail in part 2 of this series. Hence, the title of this post.

Alzheimer’s, Ketones, and Kidding Ourselves (Pt.3/3)

I concluded the previous post by introducing the idea that, when it comes to a body and brain being fueled by ketones, the absolute concentration of ketone bodies in the blood might be less important than the body’s ability to use those ketones. I expressed concern that placing the sum total of our faith in high β-OHB levels might take our eyes off the marker we should probably be more interested in: how well an AD patient is functioning. Maybe some AD patients do require ketones at upwards of 4-5mM. But maybe some others would do just great at lower levels.

Here’s my thinking on this...

Alzheimer’s, Ketones, and Kidding Ourselves (Pt.2/3)

I ended the previous post by introducing the idea of using exogenous ketones for improving the signs and symptoms of Alzheimer’s, while not requiring the afflicted individual to make any dietary changes. (Recall that, according to researchers, a very low carb diet is “inconvenient” to prepare and consume.) Is there a place for exogenous ketones in AD therapy? Yes. I believe there is. It depends on the person’s age and severity of illness, but I absolutely acknowledge that exogenous ketones can improve quality of life. BUT: with the exception of some very specific cases, which I’ll mention in a bit, I cannot support them being used as the sole intervention. It’s as bad as telling a type-2 diabetic to use insulin and do nothing else to influence the way their body handles glucose, or, really, insulin, itself.  

Please tell me someone out there is on the same page as me here.

“Alzheimer's disease patients frequently undergo changes in food preference toward sweet, carbohydrate-rich foods, which would make compliance to a ketogenic diet difficult.” (Henderson et al., 2009)

Really? Do they undergo changes in food preference toward sweet, carbohydrate-rich foods after they develop Alzheimer’s disease, or are sugar addicts more likely to develop AD? Which is the chicken, and which is the Cadbury Crème Egg?

Now, here’s where things get deep.

Alzheimer’s, Ketones, and Kidding Ourselves (Pt.1/3)

  

The Setup

Picture the following scenario:

You find yourself walking from one room into another and can’t remember why. And it’s been happening more often.

You’ve been misplacing things. Your phone, your keys, your wallet or purse. And it’s been happening more often.

You’ve been forgetting about important appointments, and that’s happening more often, too.

But this isn’t a big deal, right? You’re just getting older. This is normal. “Senior moments.” Happens to everyone.

But what if things are a little worse than that?

What if you’re out running errands and forget how to get back home?

What if you go for a walk by yourself and get lost in your own neighborhood?

What if you set something on the stove to cook, then wander away for a few minutes, and the only reason you remember you had something cooking is because the smoke alarm goes off and acrid smoke fills the house?

What if you start asking people the same simple question—one they’ve already answered—over and over—and over again?

You’re not just having senior moments. You’re having entire senior days. Senior weeks. Senior months.

You are literally losing your mind.

Maybe it’s gotten so bad you’ve had to stop working.

Maybe your family no longer trusts you to be at home by yourself, or cook for yourself, or drive your car.

Scary, huh?

But what if I told you I could fix things for you?

Podcast Interview!

Hey folks! If this is your first visit to my blog after hearing me on Jimmy Moore’s Livin’ la Vida Low Carb Podcast, here are some links to past posts I’ve done regarding Alzheimer’s disease:

• Announcement about my e-book, The Alzheimer’s Antidote
• Rant About the American Academy of Neurology’s Brain Health Fair
• Alzheimer’s Disease: Type 3 Diabetes
• Follow-up Q&A about certain dietary principles and Alzheimer's

And here’s a link to a guest post I wrote for Robb Wolf’s site, about carbs, Alzheimer's, and more, after the first interview he did with Dr. Perlmutter, after the release of the book, Grain Brain.

If you’d like to learn more about me, check out the About Me page here on this site. In the podcast, I touched only briefly on how I found low carb, so if you’re interested in all the gory details of how “eating less and moving more” failed me for most of my adolescence and young adult life, you can read about that here.  (You might also want to wait until you have an hour to spare. You will see from today’s post, or by looking through the archives, that brevity is not my strong suit.)

And now, on to the post!

Metabolic Theory of Cancer: Speculation on the Causes of Cancer -- and How to Mitigate Them (Pt.4)

We’re in the midst of exploring a few potential causes of cancer, and ways to possibly reduce risk. Up today: carcinogens. (If you’re new here, this post is pretty far down the line in a series that started back in November 2014, in which we are exploring the metabolic theory of cancer. Click here for the first post. Each one will end with a link to the next.) 

I have been saying that sometimes, people can do “all the right things,” and still end up developing some pretty gnarly health issues. I have also said that some of the diet and lifestyle factors we suspect might cause cancer (mostly by way of disrupting mitochondrial function) probably apply less to little kids than they do to older folks. So, aside from what we’ve already covered—viruses, age, and freaky mutations to mitochondrial DNA, what else might be causing cancer in babies and other people with no obvious risk factors?

The Dietetics Organization Joins the 21st Century (Kind Of...)

If you’ve been living under a rock for the past few weeks, or, unlike me, you have an actual life, which precludes you from reading as many nutrition articles, blogs, and papers as I do, you might have missed the comments from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND) in response to the Scientific Report of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. (The AND was formerly the ADA—the American Dietetic Association—the body that oversees the registered dietitian credential [RD].)

This thing has been making the rounds in the low-carb, Paleo, Primal and real food circles, mostly because it is a refreshing—and we might even say downright shocking—reversal of course by this supremely mainstream organization regarding some of the nutrients that have been public outlaws for the past few decades. While the AND has certainly not come out and directly endorsed higher-fat, low-carbohydrate diets, here a few general points they made about the recommendations by the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC), some of which agree with the committee’s findings, and some of which don’t: 

• Very low sodium diets are not appropriate for everyone, and may, in fact, be harmful for some populations. 
• There is no correlation between dietary cholesterol intake and serum cholesterol levels.
• Since the studies on saturated fat, cholesterol, and heart disease over the years have been so terribly conducted and interpreted, “the Academy suggests that HHS and USDA support a similar revision [for that of cholesterol] deemphasizing saturated fat as a nutrient of concern.”
• Carbohydrate intake is a much stronger predictor for cardiovascular disease risk than is saturated fat, and it might not be such a bad idea to replace some amount of dietary carbohydrate with fat. 

As you can see, these points mark a huge step forward for this organization, which in the past, has been tepid, conventional, and by-the-book all the way. It’s a gutsy move, and I’m thrilled to see it happen. I applaud the AND for joining the rest of us in the 21^st Century with regard to basic science about food and human health. Since I have ragged pretty hard on the AND in the past, I’m happy to be able to give credit where credit is due.

That being said, this wouldn’t be all that interesting a post if all I did was sing the praises of this document. Naturally, there are a few points of contention. So let’s look at things little more closely, celebrate the good stuff, and bring to light the not-so-good stuff. We’ll start with the not-so-good stuff and then move to the good stuff, so that we end on a positive note.

Metabolic Theory of Cancer: Speculation on the Causes of Cancer -- and How to Mitigate Them (Pt.3)

Graphic modified from Seyfried, et al. 

Cancer as a metabolic disease: 

implications for novel therapeutics. 

Carcinogenesis. 2014 Mar; 35(3): 515–527.

VIRUSES

The potential cancer cause we’ll look at today is viruses. Some cancers are known to be viral in origin, and this makes total sense. Viruses hijack a cell’s replication machinery, right? They hijack the replication mechanisms such that the virus’ own DNA or RNA gets copied like crazy, so we’re left with lots of cells that contain tons of viral DNA/RNA. I am not a microbiologist, nor do I play one on TV. But I have to assume that having lots of viral DNA or RNA floating around in a cell probably isn’t good for mitochondria. Either way, if certain viruses do cause cancer, my guess would be that they do so by affecting mitochondrial function.

As a potential cause of cancer, viruses can strike people of any age. I suspect viruses are one of the primary drivers of cancer in children. I can’t imagine much else causing it. Like I said, older people have had many more years to abuse their mitochondria via diet, lifestyle, and unknown environmental exposures. But little kids? Not so much. Something else has got to be driving cancer in younger people. (And like I've said before, it’s entirely possible there’s a role for maternal & paternal health/diet at the time of conception and during gestation, as well as environmental exposures in utero, but, like the authors of the paper I mentioned in an earlier post said, if you think I’m about to blame the parents of a child with cancer for causing that child’s cancer, you are crazier than a vegan at a Brazilian churrascaria.)

In terms of prevention,  We can’t do much about this except to make sure our immune systems are up to snuff. I have said before that most of us probably “get cancer” all the time. We have cells behaving badly and doing wacky things left and right, but our immune systems go to work and kick those misbehaving cells to the curb. (Or the cells engage in apoptosis, commit suicide, and save our immune systems the trouble.) So how might we try to ensure our immune systems are up to the task? I was originally going have a separate post (or two or three!) about cancer prevention, but it seems more logical to address potential prevention/mitigation strategies in the same post as I write about putative causes. (I would be embarrassed to admit how much time I’ve spent going back and forth over this issue, about which most of you probably don’t care one way or the other.)

Metabolic Theory of Cancer: Speculation on the Causes of Cancer -- and How to Mitigate Risk (Pt.2)

If the previous post in this series on cancer (before the video) was unsettling, good! It was supposed to be. It was meant to remind us that cancer is a vile beast, and that it can spring up seemingly from out of nowhere. It strikes people who are total health trainwrecks, and people who, by all accounts, are healthy. (That is, except for the cancer...) It strikes old people, young people, fat people, thin people, rich people, poor people, PhDs, high school dropouts, men, women, and everybody somewhere in between.

We are working under the theory that cancer is a metabolic disease. Something damages mitochondrial function to the point that cellular metabolism is derailed, and all the nefarious things cancer cells do can be understood as logical sequelae of broken mitochondria and cells that are fighting to keep themselves alive. (Anyone else hearing “Eye of the Tiger” playing in their head right now? Hehheh. [BTW…to anyone out there in the Philadelphia area, I did the Broad Street Run several years ago and someone on the sidelines about a mile from the finish line had a boom box and they were playing that song, and it was awesome. Especially because the original Rocky is one of my all-time favorite movies, but I digress. Adrian!!])

I left off last time saying that, according to the metabolic theory of cancer, anything that contributes to mitochondrial dysfunction can be considered a potential cause of cancer. I think the reason older folks tend to have higher rates of cancer is simply that their bodies have been exposed to potential cancer-causing dietary, lifestyle, environmental, and unknown factors for longer than younger people’s bodies have been. That stuff’s gotta add up over time, no? Frankly, in this day and age, I think if you make it to 85 without getting cancer, you’re kind of a living miracle.

But recall that I made a point to emphasize that babies and toddlers get cancer, too, so it’s not only a matter of physiological insults building up over time. And it’s not just eating too much vegetable oil, or slurping down too much sugar, or being sedentary, or smoking, or being exposed to too much radiation, or whatever else we might speculate could cause cancer. There are other factors at work here.

Statins: Sugar-Coating the Truth

A priest, a rabbi, and a cardiologist walk into a bar.

No, that’s not it…

Why did the cholesterol cross the road?

Nope, that’s not it either…

Did you hear the one about statins and increased risk for type 2 diabetes?

YES! That’s the one I meant. Only, this isn’t a joke.

Statin drug use is now associated with an increased risk for developing type 2 diabetes. Is this just fearmongering headlines, or is there really something to it?

  

Metabolic Theory of Cancer: Video Lesson!

Since I've fallen behind in churning out new posts in the cancer series on this blog, I wanted to share a little something with you to whet your appetite for more, and to remind you of all the amazing things we've covered so far. (I’ll get back to posting once I’ve written a few and have them in the hopper, ready to go, but I hope you’ll agree that finishing my Alzheimer’s book constitutes a “good cause” for having put things on hold.) 

I have quoted a ton from the work of Thomas Seyfried, PhD, and his colleagues & students. Here, you’ll get to see the man, himself, in action. If you’ve followed along in the series so far, you will be able to understand it all. In fact, you’ll know even more details than Dr. Seyfried goes into here. He only had 55 minutes, after all, and he wasn’t speaking to a room of molecular biologists or biochemists, so he kept things pretty general.  

Still, he managed to cover a lot of ground in less than an hour. He touches on the following, which you are now familiar with:

Thoughts on the Brain Fair (Rant Warning!)

Greetings, Earthlings!

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, on April 18^th I had a table at the American Academy of Neurology’s Brain Health Fair, which was part of their annual convention. The event was free and open to the public, and as far as I could tell, it was mostly the public that came through the exhibit hall, since I didn’t get any doctors sidling up to my little corner of this shindig. (None that I know of, anyway.) My presence at this thing coincided with the launch of my e-book on Alzheimer’s disease. I am pleased to report that I had people coming up to me all day. People were very interested in hearing about the influence of food and nutrition on brain health. I don’t expect a lot of book sales to come from it, but I think I’ll be hearing from a few new clients. (And I made an Indian woman very happy when I told her it was okay to eat ghee again!)

There were some encouraging moments, and I think I dropped more than a few “knowledge bombs,” as Sean Croxton likes to say. But there were many discouraging moments, too. In fact, my main feeling on the event can be summed up in two words:

Holy, and crap.