
Mice fed a time-restricted, high-fat diet show reduced metabolic disease (2012) - dtawfik1
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1550413112001891
======
delhanty
I'm getting some mileage from this.

Never been a morning person - assumed blood sugar must be low.

Did the glucose testing strip thing - found that was completely wrong!

Now cut carbohydrate intake until after daily brisk swim around 15:00.

Suddenly I've shed eight pounds and brain fog problem is much improved.

Hypothesis: problem was impaired blood flow to the brain not low blood sugar.

~~~
bitexploder
Pet peeves of little experiments like this of carb cutting. Cutting carbs
causes you to shed a lot of water weight. Also if the exercise is new it is
quite possible that is the bigger factor in improving perceived cognitive
ability. If you changed multiple things and started paying closer attention to
diet it is really hard to pin down what actually helped the most.

Vigorous exercise helps clear waste along with sleep, not much else really
clears things out -- brain seems more and more to be a part of, or similar to,
the lymph system.

edit: also most people who do 18 hour fasts report feeling energized, better
concentration, etc,. especially if they have caffeine on an empty stomach.

~~~
fps
I've cut carbs and increased my calorie intake (through fat and protein) over
the past year and have shed 70 lbs of "water weight". I went from Obese to a
healthy weight, from a 42" waist to a 32" waist. And I've actually decreased
the amount of exercise I've done, too. Amazing how much "water weight" all
those fat cells were holding.

~~~
sridca
How can you be sure that it was being low on carbs, as opposed to consuming
less calories overall, that was the cause of your sustained weight loss?

~~~
fps
I switched from a calorie restricted "balanced" diet (1900 kcal/day, 150g
carbs/day) with small portions that was going nowhere to an unrestricted
(>2500 kcal/day, <30g carbs/day) diet with larger portions and lost weight.

~~~
matwood
And you're measuring everything with a food log? When I do a low carb diet,
even unrestricted, I have to focus (eat on a timed schedule) on getting enough
calories to maintain my lean mass. Without carbs I simply do not eat enough
naturally to maintain a weight I want to keep.

------
latch
This almost answers a question I've often wondered.

Whenever I see research on calorie restriction, I wonder whether it's directly
caused by eating fewer calories, or indirectly caused by eating fewer bad
things. For example, methionine, an essential amino acid, is linked to cancer
growth. In other words, maybe we don't need to eat less calories, but less of
specific nutrients.

Anyways, this study seems focused on metabolic diseases and doesn't touch on
cancer or longevity in general. So, if anyone has any thoughts, I'd like to
know. It's been bugging me for a while.

~~~
wayn3
some math:

1 gram of carbs equals 4 calories.

1 gram of protein equals 4 calories.

When metabolized, however,

carbohydrates yield 5x the ATP proteins do. 1 gram of carbs is 5x as "rich in
energy" as 1 gram of proteins. In spite of them being billed as equal.

A tablespoon of sugar yields about as much energy as a pound of chicken
breast.

Then we go into fat. People think fat makes them fat. The truth is, ingested
fat can not be turned into bodyfat directly. It is way easier for the body to
turn carbs into fat than it is to turn fat into fat.

"Diet" products that extract fat from milk products, like yoghurt, and replace
them with sugar, which makes the product less calorically dense, nominally,
literally makes people more fat - AND is billed as a diet alternative.

Everything. the. media. says. is. wrong.

Everything.

And this isn't arcane knowledge acquired from some hermit. Its literally on
wikipedia. One click away. Google ATP, or adenosinetriphosphate, and read the
whole page. you will know more about diet than most dieticians.

When I talked to my physician about these things, initially, they didnt know
those basic facts either. All the knowledge we've got about how to lose weight
is buried and ignored by bullshit.

Simple facts that, if applied, make people lose weight. Caloric restriction is
bs. Carb restriction is key. You can literally eat until your stomach hurts
all day long and lose weight. Its what Ive done.

~~~
thedz
> Caloric restriction is bs. Carb restriction is key. You can literally eat
> until your stomach hurts all day long and lose weight.

While I agree that for many people, restricting carbs is a far easier method
of eating healthy while still feeling fully sated, stating that you can
"literally eat until your stomach hurts" is false, misleading, and potentially
destructive.

5000 calories of cream cheese or other caloric dense foods is, still, at the
end of the day, 5000 calories. Caloric restriction isn't the only way to diet
or eat healthy, but ignoring overall caloric intake (even rough estimates)
while only focusing on "what" you eat is one of the biggest pitfalls I see.

~~~
tbv
The "a calorie is a calorie" approach to diet and health has been thoroughly
debunked.

Our bodies metabolize carbs, protein, and fat, _very_ differently. If a
calorie is a calorie is a calorie, then we need to be able to explain why two
people eating the same amount of calories per day, but one eating a high fat,
low carb diet, and the other a low fat high carb diet see starkly different
outcomes. All things equal except the composition of their diet, the person on
the HF diet will stay lean and feel consistently satiated, while the LF person
will put on more fat and feel hungry far more frequently than the HF.

IMO, the claim that all calories are created equally is the most damaging
"science" that's been put forth as common knowledge about dieting.

~~~
matwood
> IMO, the claim that all calories are created equally is the most damaging
> "science" that's been put forth as common knowledge about dieting.

I completely disagree. At the end of the day losing weight is about changing
the amount of calories a person consumes vs. what they use. The most damaging
science is trying to say it's not about calories at all when in fact that is
almost all it is about in healthy person. Now, if you want to argue about
satiation and the ability to keep up with a diet, then the type of food
matters, but for strictly weight loss a person has to cut calories (or add
activity).

~~~
tbv
> At the end of the day losing weight is about changing the amount of calories
> a person consumes vs. what they use.

Over an extended period, yes, this bears out because the law of
thermodynamics. But the question is - can people adhere to a calorie-
restricted diet long enough to see meaningful results? More importantly, will
they simultaneously be able to build muscle and maintain normal bodily
functions (thyroids tend to stop functioning normally during extended calorie
restriction, especially when fat intake is low)?

You will have a much easier time achieving a healthy body composition and
feeling satisfied while eating a high fat low carb diet, than you would eating
the same amount of calories on a low fat high carb diet.

I say that the "calories in, calories out" approach to dieting is problematic
because it's simply not as effective as switching to a HFLC diet. It makes
building muscle tissue difficult, it encourages miserable dieting tactics, and
taken to the extreme (which many people do) is a threat to a person's health.

------
dpratt71
I know that mice have been used very successfully to study many diseases and
conditions that can also affect people. But are mice a good human analogue
when it comes to diet?

I don't have time to find citations at the moment, but I seem to recall that
the original studies linking consumption of saturated fat with...bad things
(high cholesterol, etc.) were originally done with mice and more recent
studies involving actual humans have failed to find a connection between
consumption of saturated fat and the aforementioned bad things.

~~~
bluGill
It is about compromise. The ideal would be to use real humans for all studies.
There are many reasons we cannot do this, about half of them are obvious. (try
to come up with the non-obvious ones as an exercise)

Mice are cheap, have a short lifespan, and have less ethical concerns so we
use them. They are an okay model of humans, which is good enough to say if
something fails on mice don't try it on humans. It is an open question of what
treatments would work on humans that fail in mice - but this is impossible to
study so we will never know how often this happens. (the fringe "coconut oil"
groups put it at 5% from what I can tell)

~~~
alextheparrot
You've defined above why we use model organisms, but the original question
wasn't questioning model organisms in general. I think we should work towards
the original posters challenge to validate our models are efficacious, not
just normal and cheap. After spending a semester seminar reading rodent
dietary studies, I am equally sceptical that mice are a good general model for
diet.

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threepipeproblm
I don't know if they specifically apply to this study, but Stephan Guyenet has
pointed out some of the potential problems with what are typically called
"high-fat" diets for mice.*

For example one research diet that is called high-fat, D12492 \- is extremely
high in fat (60%) \- does not contain what are generally considered to be
particularly healthy forms of fat \- is extremely processed overall \- is
typically used with genetically obesogenic mice \- typically causes obsesity
and neuron damage (and often diabetes) at a young age.

I would think there are quite a few studies on Intermittent Fasting (IF) that
more easily generalize to humans.

* [http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2012/01/high-fat-diets...](http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2012/01/high-fat-diets-obesity-and-brain-damage.html)

ADDENDUM: Here is the diet used in the actual study.
[http://www.labdiet.com/cs/groups/lolweb/@labdiet/documents/w...](http://www.labdiet.com/cs/groups/lolweb/@labdiet/documents/web_content/mdrf/mdi4/~edisp/ducm04_028003.pdf)
Some of the top ingredients are soy products (which in high enough doses will
render most animal species infertile).

~~~
agentgt
_Some of the top ingredients are soy products (which in high enough doses will
render most animal species infertile)_

Can you show legitimate repeatable recent research that shows this. I'm
starting to think that the Soy raising estrogen (to unhealthy levels) thing
may not be as true and is perpetuated in some cases as broscience.

~~~
threepipeproblm
I'm sorry, the research I reviewed on animal infertility was a long time ago.
The studies that were from the first half of the 20th century in which this
result was demonstrated on just about every domestic farmed species. I don't
have time at the moment to track those down. But I don't believe this is
'broscience'.

The first place I'd look if you're searching for studies, esp. more modern
ones, is actually the Weston A. Price Foundation. While they have an agenda
for sure (e.g. they are currently suing the US prison system for malnourishing
inmates, just to name one example of activism/ideology) I think they are
generally good folks. They have sponsored some top-notch researchers, such as
Chris Masterjohn, in the past.

Here is their scary soy page, which starts with a few citations. I think you'd
find more in some of the linked articles.

[https://www.westonaprice.org/soy-alert/](https://www.westonaprice.org/soy-
alert/)

Price was a fascinating bro, BTW.

Please feel free to post here anything that you may find to be of particular
interest.

I should add that most of these results probably don't apply to traditionally
fermented soy (like natto or traditionally made soy sauce -- but not the mass
produced stuff nowadays); as I understand it there is no traditional culture
which ate soy in an unfermented form.)

~~~
agentgt
Thanks. I'm always trying to reduce meat and other animal product consumption
but its fairly difficult with out some if not a large portion of soy
consumption.

I'll have to check if tempeh (which is what I normally eat) has the same soy
dangers (it is supposedly traditional fermented).

~~~
threepipeproblm
Another way to reduce meat and animal product consumption, though counter
intuitive, may be bone broth / anything with gelatin or glycine. I understand
it has a "protein sparing" effect, meaning you can eat less protein total
without muscle wasting. Our ancestors got a higher ratio of this stuff by
eating more of the whole animal, rather than eating primarily muscle muscle
bellies, as we tend to do today.

------
pizza
There's a theory called the protein leverage hypothesis: as the percentage of
food protein decreases, hunger is increased to the point that you eat more
calories of food that have a higher fat % + carbohydrates %, to compensate for
the need to accumulate the remainder of your daily protein. This tweet
explains it w/ a graphic from a study:
[https://twitter.com/tednaiman/status/868597859037216768](https://twitter.com/tednaiman/status/868597859037216768)

------
DeusExMachina
Intermittent fasting has been quite popular in the fitness and lifestyle
worlds in the last years. I myself have been practicing it for more than a
year now. A good point to start (which I used myself) is this article from
James Clear: [http://jamesclear.com/the-beginners-guide-to-intermittent-
fa...](http://jamesclear.com/the-beginners-guide-to-intermittent-fasting)

------
BareNakedCoder
Read The Obesity Code by Jason Fung. A real doctor using real medical studies
but with a different view to explain in common language why diets fail and why
old practices work.

~~~
cynicalbastard
his youtube lectures and interviews are also good.

i wouldn't advise sharing his findings with most other people though,
especially those who are prone to get swept up with the prevailing beliefs on
things like low-fat eating and/or fasting.

the great thing about modern society with regards to diet is you can eat
whatever you want and get your blood and weight/fat% tested as often as you
want without anyone else's input or permission.

------
yza
From personal experience (IANAD), cutting carbs to below 50g/day has greatly
improved my life. This "diet" naturally leads to increased fat and protein
intake, and for me resulted in weight loss, better concentration and reduction
of inflammation (mild psoriasis improvement).

Also, I recently got a pack of (urine) testing sticks which confirm a high
level of ketones, and plan to experiment with increasing the daily carb limit.

~~~
kirykl
Just be careful with increased urine acidity that accompanies ketones. It can
cause kidney stones, and can be prevented by supplementing with potassium
citrate

------
rsync
What's depressing about all of this is that it's not really that interesting.

 _We know_ that exercise and activity improve all metabolic measures, increase
happiness, longevity and outputs.

But very few people pursue that strategy. You can barely get post-injury
patients to do their rehab exercises.

Similarly, we seem to have very good evidence of the benefits of
fasting/restriction/etc. _in addition to_ the very good historical evidence of
these behaviors being so well preserved by culture and religion, across the
world.

But people aren't going to do it. It's not going to change anything for
(almost everyone).

~~~
e40
Agreed. I've been doing IF (intermittent fasting) for the last 3 months. It's
changed completely how I feel, in addition to losing some weight that was
bothering me. It's like a weight has been taken off my metabolic system, that
was working way too hard to process the amount of food I was throwing at it.
And, the monkey on my back which was my sugar addiction is mostly gone--I
still occasionally have sweets, but far less often than I used to.

------
dghughes
Humanity is going to argue over what is the best diet (regular not reducing)
until the end of time.

~~~
emptybits
And reasonably so. Partly, this is because the "best diet" at any given time
depends on practical factors like availability and affordability. Both of
those have been rapidly improving, I think, for much of the world. I can buy
food today that, to my grandparents or even parents, was unheard-of or only-
eaten-by-kings.

e.g. the value of quinoa or blue-green algae in a diet probably makes sense to
study now, but it probably didn't 50 years ago

------
DoofusOfDeath
"In order to adapt to the daily cycles of nutrient availability, energy
metabolism in animals has evolved to be cyclical."

That sentence makes claims about history and about causality. I wonder if they
really have the evidence needed to back them up.

~~~
coldtea
Seems like a very easy case to make given the available observations, and
something that can be easily studied.

To me, if they couldn't know this much, it would be like a civil war historian
that couldn't really tell who gave the Gettysburg address.

------
spraak
You can probably use mice to validate and invalidate any diet.

------
OldSchoolJohnny
Jesus, the debate is long over. All that are left are people who can't seem to
reset their brains to realize the food pyramid was wrong all along.

This is like some slow moving comedic parade of ignorance or something. Do
your research people and move on, the debate is over, fat doesn't make you fat
and all the truly controlled scientific studies show the way forward.

It's been painful over the years watching the big brains here snail their way
slowly slowly slowly crawling towards what is long proven reality on the
subject.

------
emptybits
I suspect a lot of HN probably listens to Sam Harris' podcast, but just in
case ... there was a relevant episode last month where he and Gary Taubes
discuss the whole "good calories vs bad calories" idea and popular fat/protein
misunderstandings over the last few decades.

[https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/what-should-we-
eat](https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/what-should-we-eat)

------
sjcsjc
This is from 2012

~~~
taneq
Oh right, the great metabolic upgrade of 2014 changed all this.

~~~
turc1656
HAHAHA! This comment made my day.

FWIW, I did have a great metabolic upgrade in 2013 and 2014. And it was done
by cutting down on carbs and eating delicious foods like fatty chicken and
beef, cheeses, etc, and cooking with lard whenever possible.

