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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Tim Noakes
Started reading
March 20, 2019
Multiple populations studied by Dr Weston Price Perhaps the person who has made the greatest contribution to our understanding of how dietary changes influence human health is Dr We...
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Over the next decade, the Prices examined the teeth and general health of the Swiss inhabitants of the Lötschental Valley; of Scottish families living on the Outer and Inner Hebrides; of the Inuit (Eskimos) of Alaska; of the Indians of north, west and central Canada, the western United States and Florida; of the Melanesians and Polynesians inhabiting eight archipelagos of the Southern Pacific; of six tribes in eastern and central Africa, including the Masai; of the Aborigines of Australia; of Malay tribes living on islands north of Australia; of the Maori of New Zealand; and of South Americans
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Without exception, the findings in all these populations were the same. Specifically, those who continued to eat the foods of their ancestors showed: an almost total absence of tooth decay; broad faces, wide nostrils and perfect dental
arches; superior immunity, demonstrated by an absence of tuberculosis in some communities (such as the Swiss of the Lötschental Valley); and an absence of most of the modern ‘chronic diseases of lifestyle’, including cancer, rheumatic diseases and other autoimmune diseases.
Yet dental decay and the other ‘chronic diseases of lifestyle’ started to appear in the first generation of those who began to eat what Price called the ‘displacing foods of modern commerce’, including ‘chiefly white flour, sugar, polished rice, vegetable fats and canned goods’. To which Price should p...
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In other words the foods of the native Eskimos contained 5.4 times as much calcium as the displacing foods of the white man, five times as much phosphorus, 1.5 times as much iron, 7.9 times as much magnesium, 1.8 times as much copper, 49.0 times as much iodine, and at least ten times the number of fat-soluble vitamins.’75
Price also noted: ‘As yet I have not found a single group of primitive racial stock which was building and maintaining excellent bodies by living entirely on plant foods.’76 In part, he thought this might be because vegetables do not contain vitamin D (or the most usable form of vitamin A).
In essence, he concluded that the diet that prevents dental caries promotes optimum health. Or, stated in the converse: any diet that promotes dental caries, promotes chronic ill health.
different groups to be absolutely essential: Seafood: fish and shellfish, fish organs, fish liver oils and fish eggs. Organ meats from wild animals or grass-fed domestic animals. Insects. Fats of certain birds and single-stomached animals, such as sea mammals, guinea pigs, bears and hogs. Egg yolks from pastured chickens and other birds. Whole milk, cheese and butter from grass-fed animals.
It is perhaps not surprising that these studies, showing that dental caries can be prevented by high-quality diets, have been essentially forgotten or, perhaps, actively suppressed.
evidence of cancer in the Inuit, postulated that cancer is a disease of modern civilization.84 Schmid includes quotes from three doctors who worked among the Inuit, all of whom confirmed that ‘cancer was unknown’ there. But once the Inuit adopted the industrial diet, cancer ‘frequently occurred’, as did tuberculosis.85 The absence of cancer in mummies from Egypt and South America86 led one study to propose: ‘In industrialised societies, cancer is second only to cardiovascular disease as a cause of death. But in ancient times, it was extremely rare. There is nothing in the natural environment
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Yudkin’s thesis is essentially the same as that of Cleave and Campbell, specifically:
It is suggested that the effect of this is that wealthier countries, and the wealthier section of a national population, tend to have a higher intake of calories from the accompanying flour, chocolate, fat and other ingredients of these manufactured foods … one of the effects of this contribution of calories from sugar-containing foods is to reduce the consumption of nutritionally desirable foods, such
as fruit and meat … In the wealthier countries, there is evidence that sugar and sugar-containing foods contribute to several diseases, including obesity, dental caries, diabetes mellitus and myocardial infarction … the known association of the prevalence of diabetes and of myocardial infarction with the level of fat intake is fortuitous and secondary. It is more likely that the primary association is with levels of sugar intake, which I have shown are, in turn, closely related to levels of fat intake.104
In 2009, paediatric endocrinologist Robert Lustig released a YouTube video titled Sugar: The Bitter Truth, in which he highlighted the (now) established dangers of sugar and high-fructose corn syrup.106 The video has been viewed more than seven million times to date. In 2013, Lustig published Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity and Disease, in which he fully vindicated Yudkin.107 Three years later, Gary Taubes would do the same in The Case Against Sugar.108 In 2012, on the 40th anniversary of its first publication, Yudkin’s Pure, White and Deadly was
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Another significant modern contributor to this science is Professor Richard J. Johnson, now of the Department of Medicine at the University of Colorado, Denver.
He discovered that the key lies in the production
of uric acid by an enzyme called AMP deaminase, which is present in all cells, but is of particular importance in the liver.109 He then found that fructose activates this enzyme. Thus, Johnson’s theory is that the fructose in sugar increases uric acid production, which switches susceptible humans into hibernation mode, producing hyperphagia (overeating due to increased hunger), IR, and elevated blood glucose, insulin and triglyceride concentrations, leading to fat accumulation in the liver and fat cells. He believes that it is the increase in sugar consumption over the past 50 to 100 years
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In the next chapter, I explain how this degrading of human health was accelerated largely by the efforts of one man, Dr Ancel Keys, who, ignoring the work of McCarrison, Price, Cleave, Campbell and Yudkin, plunged the world into the worst health crisis in history. Keys was the father of what will be judged, in time, as the greatest mistake in modern medicine/science: the acceptance of the diet-heart and lipid hypotheses without adequate evidence.
By measuring the amount of fat in the livers of people with different metabolic conditions, including T2DM and NAFLD, Fernando Brill and his colleagues at the University of Florida have established that it is the presence of NAFLD, and not the overall level of body fatness, that predicts the presence of atherogenic dyslipidaemia.35 Their work therefore establishes that it is IR and NAFLD, and not obesity per se, that produces the abnormal metabolic state (atherogenic dyslipidaemia) that causes heart disease in those with IR and the related metabolic syndrome. The following are the metabolic
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NAFLD). But the absolutely key point is that it is dietary carbohydrates, especially fructose36 present in sucrose, high-fructose corn syrup and fruit, allied to high intakes of unsaturated fats (oleate),37 and not dietary saturated fats, that cause NAFLD. In part, this is because the major pathway by which fructose is cleared from the bloodstream is its conversion to liver fat (triglyceride).
5. A low blood cholesterol concentration predicts a shorter life expectancy and increases risk for developing a range of diseases
This is likely because cholesterol serves so many vital functions in the human body, such as: Maintaining the stiffness and stability of cell
walls. Essential for the synthesis of neurotransmitters for propagation of nerve impulses through neurons. Essential for the production of enzymes and hormones, including aldosterone, cortisol, oestrogen, cortisone, progesterone, testosterone and ubiquinone. Essential for the synthesis of vitamin D3, which is responsible for proper bone calcification. Essential precursor of other molecules that are important for proper bodily functioning, including the production of bile.
So the infant in utero lives on a knife-edge: insufficient IR, and the infant will have inadequate body-fat stores to maximise its brain development during the first two years of life; too much, and the infant will likely develop obesity/T2DM, perhaps even in adolescence.
2. IR is the common condition that causes chronic diseases in those eating high-carb diets Dr Gerald Reaven, now emeritus professor of medicine at Stanford University, has spent the past 60 years studying the condition that intellectually he now owns, insulin resistance.
people with IR who eat high-carb diets (more than 50 grams per day), whether associated with T2DM or not, produces a collection of grave secondary consequences:66 Weight gain Increased fat in the abdominal organs (visceral adiposity) High blood pressure Abnormal blood fat, glucose and insulin concentrations (atherogenic dyslipidaemia – Table 16.3 on page 314) Elevated blood uric-acid concentrations (gout) Impaired ability of arteries to dilate (endothelial dysfunction) Whole-body inflammation Dysfunction of the mitochondria (cellular organs that produce energy) Progressive increases in IR
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The six conditions most likely caused by high-carbohydrate diets in those with IR are: Obesity Arterial disease Local: Heart attack or stroke Disseminated: T2DM High blood pressure NAFLD Cancer Dementia (Alzheimer’s disease, also known at type-3 diabetes)
Reaven’s (Metabolic) Syndrome refers to the combination of obesity, diabetes, abnormal blood lipid levels and high blood pressure existing in the same individual. It is this singular combination that best predicts heart-attack risk.
The key finding from Reaven’s work is that these conditions are not separate – they are different expressions of the same underlying condition. So patients should not be labelled as having high blood pressure or heart disease or diabetes or NAFLD. Instead, they should be diagnosed with the underlying condition – IR – with the understanding that the high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, NAFLD, heart attack, stroke, perhaps even cancer or dementia, are simply markers, symptoms if you will, of the basic condition. And that basic condition is IR, which, simply put, is the inability of the body
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blood pressure, and perhaps even cancer and dementia are, in fact, all symptoms of the same underlying condition – IR – then our current model of medical management must be wrong, requiring, as it does, specific but different pharmacological
treatments for each separate condition, overseen by different hierarchies of medical specialists. And what if the cornerstone for the treatment of all these conditions is a low-carbohydrate diet, the very diet that has been vilified by my profession for the past 50 years? It must be an extremely frightening thought for many medical professionals. How do you come to terms with the possibility that, by following medical orthodoxy, you may have harmed many patients?
From the work of Reaven, Volek and their colleagues, and from my own study,75 we know that the only chance these groups have of escaping the deadly complications of IR and T2DM is to drastically reduce their daily carbohydrate intake to below 50 grams per day. Those with T2DM should reduce to below 25 grams per day. The problem is that because so many of these typical South Africans have blood cholesterol concentrations ‘dangerously elevated’ at more than 5.01 mmol/L, when they finally present themselves to conventionally trained physicians or cardiologists who believe that cholesterol causes
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and referred to a dietitian, who will prescribe the usual ‘prudent, heart-healthy, low-fat diet in moderation’.
But statins will increase the risk for developing T2DM (Chapter 7), and the low-fat diet will expedite the development of T2DM and all its complications in the vast majority of these South Africans, whose IR is already so far advanced...
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Type-2 diabetes mellitus In Chapter 7, I presented the evidence that more than 90 per cent of patients with T2DM can stop taking insulin if they follow the LCHF diet. Which raises the question: What is the effect of using insulin if you have T2DM? The answer: Not good. Two recent studies show that progressive use of injected insulin is associated with increases in all-cause mortality, major cardiovascular events and, in one study, cancer rates.79 Other large-scale observational studies from Canada and the UK show exactly the same outcomes. This fits with Reaven’s model that insulin is the
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High blood pressure (hypertension) According to a meta-analysis by M.R. Law, J.K. Morris and N.J. Wald, treatment of high blood pressure with medication reduces the relative (not absolute) risk for a subsequent heart attack by about 25 per cent, and for a stroke by about 33 per cent.81 This effect requires that systolic blood pressure
fall by 10 mmHg or diastolic blood pressure by 5 mmHg. In our Canadian intervention, studying the effects of the LCHF diet on metabolic syndrome, we achieved larger average reductions in systolic blood pressures (14 mmHg) with diet alone. Many of our subjects had also stopped taking their blood pressure–lowering medications during the trial.82 My point is that the LCHF diet might lower blood pressure more effectively than pharmacological treatments. In addition, the LCHF intervention includes many other benefits that c...
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meta-analysis use relative not absolute risk reduction, and so, by default or design, dramatically inflate the apparent value of the drugs. For example, in this meta-analysis of 464 164 people, 22 115 (4.76 per cent) suffered heart attacks and 17 890 (3.85 per cent) strokes during the average of four years that the trials lasted. If the drugs reduced heart attack risk by 25 per cent and stroke risk...
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2.54 per cent. Which means that the absolute risk reduction for a heart attack is 0.71 per cent (4.76 minus 4.05), and for stroke, 1.31 per cent (3.85 minus 2.54). Which further means that to calculate the number needed to treat (NNT),** we divide the absolute risk reduction percentage into 100, giving NNTs for heart attack and stroke reduction of 141 and 76 respectively. Thus, to produce one beneficial outcome in one single patient, we must treat between 76 and 141 hypertensive patients with (expensive) medications for at least four years. Interestingly, the NNTs for the 10 highest-grossing
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Alzheimer’s disease There are no pharmacological drugs that make any difference to this disease. Some argue that promoting ketogenesis with a ketogenic LCHF diet may improve memory in patients with this condition. But because Alzheimer’s is a form of diabetes (type-3 diabetes),85 perhaps the best solution would be to prevent the condition in the first place by following the type of LCHF diet that has been shown to ‘reverse’ T2DM in a large number of people with advanced IR.86
Cancer As discussed earlier in this chapter, cancer was essentially unheard of in populations eating their traditional diets. Even the mid-Victorian English did not suffer greatly from cancer (Figure 16.7 on
page 324). That is why cancer is considered to be a disease of ‘civilization’. Today, cancer is the second-leading cause of death among Americans, with one in four deaths in the US due to cancer. In 2013, 1 536 119 Americans received a new diagnosis of cancer and 584 872 died of the disease. The direct medical costs of cancer in the US are estimated at $74.8 billion.87 Clearly, modern medicine does not yet have any answers for the prevention and treatment of cancer. But perhaps the Inuit, the Plains Indians, the Masai, the Pathans and other ‘manly, stalwart and resolute races of the north [of
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‘Soon it became apparent, in interview after interview, that the story went far beyond the cold, empirical data, it tapped into base psychology, human limitations, economic incentives, and the deep-rooted, powerful forces of groupthink, forces that carry the inertia of the Titanic. Scientific progress doesn’t glide from one exalted epiphany to the next, like the story of Isaac Newton getting hit on the head by an apple. It is a torch carried by human beings, it lurches, stumbles, wanders into dead ends, and then finds its way back out. It doesn’t march in a straight line – it trips its way
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showed, Vorster was not the only one with this type of clear conflict of interest. Many, if not most, of the doctors, dietitians and academics involved in the HPCSA’s case against Noakes have links with drug companies and/or the sugar industry in general, and the ILSI in particular.
they had done so, they would have read that: ‘From six months of age, give your child meat, chicken, fish or egg every day, or as often as possible.’
Noakes has had many ‘angels’ helping him on his journey, among them his expert witnesses, Dr Zoë Harcombe, Nina Teicholz and Dr Caryn Zinn. Despite the best efforts of the HPCSA’s expensive team of external lawyers, Tim’s Angels stood firm. Their evidence was the angelic and scientific equivalent of landmines, which they exploded in the faces of the HPCSA’s witnesses.
