My (entirely non-scientific) opinion is that most people exercise the wrong way.
After a bit of training, muscles can store carbon-hydrates for about 1.5 hours of exercise. When these carbs a burned, muscles take new carbs directly from the blood stream.
So if you exercise by burning mostly carbs and don't eat, you end up with low blood sugar levels and a very strong urge to eat.
The trick is to burn fat. But to burn fat in a straight forward way you first have deplete the carb store, and basically force muscles to burn fat. This requires exercise that lasts many hours in one go.
The additional benefit as far as I know is that if muscles are trained to burn fat, they will start burning more fat even when not in use. So the effect lasts a lot longer than just the actual amount of exercise.
So we have a culture where exercise means to go to the gym and do exciting things there. Which mainly burns carbs.
In the past when people did manual labor, they worked the same way for an entire day, burning mostly fat.
I'm a distance runner and personally find I enjoy a high fat diet for balancing weight, performance (how I feel more than time), and physique (entirely ego driven, but can't over look the real effect of thoughts/beliefs on health).
That said I have personally run on high fat (even in ketosis, and seperately eating animal products and vegan); high protein/more fairly a body builder bulking macro(including dairy protein: whey and casein); and high carb. And we all know we can find athletes of the highest level in every sport practicing various mixtures of those diets to great success. So I don't think it is fair to say people are doing it wrong by burning primarily glucose as opposed to fat.
I think the most successful diets (no matter the macro nutrient philosophy) have the following in common:
1. Hydration/absorption: obviously no matter what cells must be properly hydrated and absorb micro/macro nutrients.
2. Anti-inflammatory foods: inflammation is linked to every chronic disease there is and even at the highest levels of performance do you want your cells combating inflammation or involved in the krebs cycle.
3. Anti-toxin: toxins can be eliminated from the body through the pores or excretion. Not all toxins can be sweated out and not all will naturally be excreated but certain foods can bind to toxins. So foods promoting removal of toxins from the body are important, but outside diet, exercise is important, abstaining from toxins like cigarettes is important, and probably because of the level of toxins on the modern western diet practices like juice cleanses and fastings could be important tools toward anti toxin cellular health.
4. Anti oxidants: as cells oxidize free radical can spread around the body, it's important to eliminate or isolate free radicals which can be potential causes of diseases like cancer.
5. Micro/macro nutrient: someone else mentioned maximizing micro nutrient intake to calorie ratio, that's probably a good way to put it. As I mentioned I'm starting to see macros as a personal choice based on the individual, that said I have very strong opinions to support my high fat preference (not keto though) and think so long as a person has achieved cellular health through 1-4 they too can experiment with their macros to suite their personal desire and needs.
6. Microbiome: I don't even pretend to understand what's going on here, but often hear this refered to as the second brain. While a neat phrase I'll just point to a study in equatorial Africa on twins, where it's not uncommon to have identical twins on the same diet 1 malnurished and the other not with the only difference to be found in their microbiome.
That's what I was always using bluntly in arguments with the 'detox crowd' until I learned about chelation therapy [1]. So it's not as simple as 'no way administering any substance will get rid of toxins'. Now, that doesn't mean there is any truth whatsoever in typical detox claims (think 'drink this tea for five days and you'll get rid of toxins stored in your body') but it does mean, to me, that I won't be using overly general claims like 'this whole detox is a bunch of crap' but instead opt for more prudent statements. Which is imo what the one you're replying to did: it wasn't about the standard detox stuff, but about avoiding toxins in the first place and about toxins binding to certain food. Which I'd love to read more about.. Sources anyone?
Thank you for giving me a fair reading in the understandably controversial topic of diet.
I don't use "anti-toxin" as a magical detox, and never thought that's how people would interpret what I wrote but I believe you are correct and that's what's occurring. I mean it as consuming foods that maximize detoxification processes of the body (healthy pores, health liver function, healthy kidney function) and minimizing the introduction of toxins, but also minimizing foods that clog the processes. I even acknowledge toxins don't all come from diet, and promote not smoking and exercise (sweating to release toxins), I'm not exactly selling anti toxin snake oil.
Truthfully I don't put a great amount of stock in juicing and fasting in otherwise healthy diets, which can be fairly read into my OP - though I'm open minded and understand the latest science to suggest fasting promotes cellular health and longevity - so while nothing of magic I do believe they are tools for people whose systems are regularly over overwhelmed.
There was just a great article on HN about how far away we are from immortality and to date the greatest tools we have are diet and exercise, it was just an interview but if you can find it, you would be able to find the research group and their studies, I never went further but I felt like I had finally found another person discussing diet/nutrition in terms of cellular health. Also I find pharmacists and doctors know a lot about the Krebs cycle. Separately, I would recommend talking to athletes about their diets, it's my personal
Favorite way of learning, from body builders to endurance athletes, I like to think they are the real diet hackers and has what lead me to the philosophy I outline above. Personally I could talk about every food I eat and why. Lastly, there are a ton of food industry/diet documentaries on Netflix, they are a mixed bag and I will go so far as to say selling snake oil or industry propaganda, that said if this stuff interests you watch them, one of my favorites is a "juicing" one called fat sick and dying (or something) and while it's a bit of a sales pitch it inspired me to begin consuming (juicing/eating) a wide variety of green veggies and the impact is so great on my health and running that the reality is greater than the snake oil they sell.
The liver is an organ that functions to detoxify the body, read into my comment how you would like but at minimum it's not very controversial that you can abstain from the introduction of certain toxins to the body and you can consume foods that at minimum promote the healthy function of the liver so the liver is properly processing toxins into less harmful substances for removal from the body.
Even if you don't believe the science showing that certain food can bind with toxins allowing them to be brought to the liver, kidneys or excreted, It's not controverisial to belihumans can avoid adding unncecessary toxins to their body thru diet if not avoiding smoking. But honestly toxins in the body and the function of the liver are not controverial and it's not controversial that diet can either promote liver health and function or Overwhelm the liver leading to short term issues like alcohol posioning or long term issues including fatty liver disease.
It's much better people not have fatty liver, their livers otherwise process sugar/toxins properly, but to maximize cellular health mimizing the need for the liver spend energy detoxifying the body/processing sugar.
Yeah, because toxins do not exist, right ? And you can't ingest them or be exposed to them chronically. It only makes sense that we all live in perfectly clean environment and eat perfectly nutritious food 24x7 ...
Your liver removes toxins as one of its normal functions. There is no evidence that any sort of 'detox' diet is able to assist with this any more than a normal diet (with sufficient vitamins etc.).
You acknowledge vitamins are required for healthy detox functions of the liver...those vitamins come from food/diet and the toxins themselves come from foods also.
So to promote optimal health foods that promote healthy detox functions should be consumed and those that uncessisarily introduce toxins or disturb proper detox functions of the body should be avoided...if you call that a "normal diet" fine, at this point you are debating semantics.
Just to put things in perspective with "normal", 10% of US kids have non alcoholic fatty liver disease, just like childhood diabetes...these diseases didn't exist in kids 30 years ago and they are all dietary, so let's drop words like "normal" and talk specifics.
Yeah, because liver has unlimited resources and efficiency just if u give it anything, such as dirt, and you can overload it with any type of toxin without a problem and it will do just fine. I am sure that is what is going on.
That's not how it works by any means...use alcohol as a single example, a normal, healthy liver processes alcohol at a given rate (approximately 1oz of alcohol/hour), your liver is "overwhelmed" when you consume more alcohol than it can keep pace with, that leads to alcohol in the blood and intoxication...that is a far cry from a liver being overwhelmed to the extent their is a lethal amount of alcohol in the blood and death.
Where do you think the disease fatty liver comes from? You do understand a fatty liver isn't going to be functioning normally and more easily overwhelmed by toxins in the future right?
Why do you think children for the first time in history have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease? Their livers are being overworked, not to the extent death by toxicity occurred, but to the extent they develop chronic conditions in childhood that it used to take a lifetime to acquire.
No one is talking about mystical healing, rational people are discussing eating foods that promote healthy liver/kidney function, in turn promote overall cellular health, and to the extent possible avoiding unnecessary toxins like smoking or excessive drinking.
