Public Memo to Dr. Mike Eades
Sir Dr. Mike. There’s a substantial comment in your moderation queue on this post.
Perhaps in the business, it’s been overlooked. It’s a very serious 10-Point treatment about how you’re wrong on all 10 points. But, Duck is always good about being nice, even from a Toni sock puppet.
It’s Monday. If I don’t see it approved by Wednesday, then it gets posted here, with adverse commentary.
Update: The Comment Dr. Michael Eades Doesn’t Want You To See.
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Well hell, it’s going to be discussed here eventually, anyway. May as well get a jump start on enjoying the tom foolery.
Richard, maybe it’s time for you and Duck to stop making fools out of yourselves.
We’ll get right on that.
I’m sure you won’t miss a post, even though he and I have zero idea of who you are and wouldn’t, even if we happened to care.
Bye, nobody. Can’t even offer an argument.
Go away pussy Tuck, blond hair and all.
Aww, how cute. We have an Eades fanboy apologist in our midst. Defending him unconditionally, like a loyal dog.
Do yourself a favor, Tuck. Go back and read every word of Dr. Eades’ blog post on confirmation bias and Inuit ketosis. Then read Richard’s posts and Duck’s comments on the subject thereafter. Decide for yourself who is actually more familiar with the available data on this topic, versus who is defending preexisting beliefs based on flimsy evidence and weak argumentation.
Or, you can keep worshipping Mike Eades because he was highly recommended by some bloggers you stumbled upon years ago. Don’t do any actual research of your own. Just stay blind and loyal. And be very grateful that you didn’t stumble onto FTA first. Otherwise, you’d certainly believe in bullshit, but you’d never realize it.
Our Society was born at Kitty Hawk on one of those dark and windy nights when nothing flew; even the seagulls bounced from place to place like hoppy toads. Our founders, who had been invited to attend a ceremony on December 17, honoring a pair of bicycle mechanics from Dayton Ohio, began drinking and thinking on the evening of December 16. They drank and they thought until the myth of the Wright Brothers’ flight in 1903 became as hard to swallow as the bootleg rye they imbibed.
Thus was born the society’s motto: “Birds Fly, Men Drink”. And thus its purpose: Exposure of the widely held myth of machines moving through the air with men “flying” them. This myth, it was clear, had its origins in folklore, long before the Wright Brothers.
First came the nonsense of Cupid flying through the air. Then there was the fairy tale of Pegasus, a winged horse. Next came the fabled Arabian carpet. And the bit of flummery about a flying stork that dropped babies down chimneys. Small wonder that humankind, nourished on such nonsense, would believe that bicycle mechanics could move through the air like winged fowl.
Accepting the challenge these myths have perpetuated, The Man Will Never Fly Memorial Society has fought the hallucination of airplane flight with every weapon at its command save sobriety. We remain dedicated to the principle that two Wrights made a wrong at Kitty Hawk.
http://manwillneverfly.com/
Jake
That’s something. I lafed ironically, the whole way through.
Seemed fitting 😛
Tuck.
It’s too late to put the cat back into the bag.
Science moves on.
With or without you.
“Ducks Dodger” doesn’t look like a typo…
Why waste time ??? All this is noise, if this doc wants a praising crowd, he’s already got it. I find it utterly weird that one can build a reputation around such a mundane thing as a particular metabolic state (ketosis) but really, let them play in their church. The whole debates are rhetorical, ego-centered, my church against your church kinda crap. Useless, wasteful.
What I did not explicitly say is that if this doc said from the start “Oh, that’s interesting, let me double-check your inputs, could bring up some further understanding”, it would be worth debating. But that’s not the case, it looks a lot like this guy’s mind had “solidified” into a rigid state. All he seems to want now is more praise. And by just skimming the comments on his blog post, he gets them alright.
Right on FrenchFry: Eades is arrogant. He bathes in the glow of his sycophantic echo chamber readers. ‘Oh Holy Eades, I bow down to your genius’. I wonder what effect copious volumes of single malt scotch has on the ketotic brain. Perhaps it does ‘solidify’ it as you speculate. He’s such an elitist snob, it’s a wonder that butter melts in his mouth.
Whether Duckie is right or wrong, debate is crucial for progress in knowledge. I await the next FTA installment.
This “solidifying” of the mind is something I’ve become increasingly aware of in people around me recently, mainly older folks of course. It annoys me like hell, not to mention scares me shitless. I need someone to tell me when it happens to me so I can self-administer a led pill.
It’s when the brain relies way too much on shortcuts, when the person does not really see the reality of things more than half of the time due to habits that went on for too long. It is actually known that the brain does take such shortcuts, you can’t process all real events in real time constantly or you would spend a lot of time reinterpreting things that you already know, are familiar with. As you are more and more experienced, the brain does this more and more. Looks like past a certain point, there is no way back …
This can also partly explain why kids have a different sense of time: they are processing much more of reality in real time.
Yeah, perhaps we all need an encounter with LSD or magic mushrooms at some point, I seem to recall reading it increases neuroplasticity but perhaps i dreamt that up. Seems like a good way to kick the head open again though.
It’s interesting that Eades hits on the real issue (what is the rate at which glycogen converts to lactic acid), and then completely side steps it by saying that the Inuit were keto adapted, which is circular logic, since that’s the whole idea that’s being challenged. The question then becomes, how soon after a kill are the Inuit eating meat? Minutes, hours, days, or weeks? Also, cooler temps just have to slow down the process, not completely stop it. That’s why our refrigerators and freezers work, even though they aren’t cooled to -320 degrees.
Good points, John! But the glycogen discussion is really a distraction from the main point, which is that all the available literature on the Inuit states that they ate too much protein and not nearly enough fat. And Heinbecker could only find evidence of adaptation to starvation ketosis over the course of three different studies, but he found no ketosis from the diet. Both Heinbecker and the Kroghs used respiratory chambers, analyzing their feces, urine, breath, respiratory quotient and diet. Heinbecker tested urine for acetone, diacetic, and β-hydroxybutyric acid; acetone bodies in the breath; respiratory quotient; as well documenting their high protein intake. And none of the scientists were particularly all that surprised by the absence of ketosis, given the macronutrient levels that were observed.
In his recent dismissive comment about the Inuit’s high protein intake, Eades mentioned that Bill Lagakos wrote an article about maintaining ketosis while on a high protein diet. Unfortunately, the diets mentioned in Bill’s article don’t resemble the Inuit diet that was observed in the scientific literature. In the comments of the article, Bill writes:
According to Bill, Phinny’s 1983 subjects were consuming, “~3140 kcals, 129 grams of protein (1.75 g/kg!!) and about 293 grams of fat.”
However, according to measurements from both Krogh & Krogh (1914) and Rabinowitch (1936), the Inuit were consuming significantly more protein and a lot less fat than the studies Bill references—the fat and protein are basically reversed with the Inuit.
Krogh & Krogh determined that the Inuit consumed about 280 grams of protein, 135 grams of fat and 54 grams of carbs (slightly more than half of which was glycogen, the rest was bread and sugar which had been available since 1855).
Rabinowitch estimated that the Inuit consumed 250 to 300 grams of protein, about 150 grams of fat, and 30 to 40 grams of carbohydrate (some of which was glycogen).
And, even if the ratios weren’t reversed, are we to believe that the Inuit were constantly living in a state of energy deficit?? I’m sure there were periods when they slipped into ketosis from an energy deficit—after all, Heinbecker found that the Inuit were keto-adapted to starvation ketosis.
So, I’m not sure why Eades thinks Bill’s article proves anything about the Inuit diet. It really doesn’t feel like Eades is paying attention to any of the details in this discussion.
“who the hell wants to emulate an Inuit diet when so much variety is available at more temperate climates?”
Well, obviously nobody.
But, the reason why this discussion is important is because chronic ketosis advocates use the Inuit to absolve themselves of having to prove the long term safety of their extreme diets. They say that ketosis must be safe if the Inuit do it (except there’s never been a study showing chronic ketosis in the Inuit).
Instead of looking at the scientific literature, these LCHF advocates just point to Stefansson, and other Arctic explorers, to prove their diet is safe. However, what they are overlooking is that these caucasian explorers could not tolerate the Inuits’ high levels of protein, so it was the explorers who had to go into ketosis to survive in the Arctic.
In the late 1970s, Harold Draper hypothesized on the pre-modern Eskimo reported that the Inuit had abnormally large livers and very high urine volumes, apparently to deal with the high demand of gluconeogenesis (converting protein to carbohydrate):
Once you consider that the Inuit evolved to handle such high quantities of protein—given that they had these abnormally large livers—you can see how even the Discover article goes on to confuse the data for readers by pointing to Stefansson’s high fat intake. Here we know that the Inuit have much larger livers than Stefansson and other white Arctic explorers do, and then the Bellevue Experiment—an experiment on Westerners—is used to extrapolate what must be happening with the Inuit.
But, of course, Stefansson got sick within the first few days of the Bellevue Experiment, while trying to replicate the high levels of protein in the Inuit, that had been observed by scientists. Stefansson demanded more fat to cure his rabbit starvation, and put him in ketosis. White explorers had to go into ketosis while living with the Inuit simply because their livers were unable to perform that much gluconeogenesis.
So, when you put the pieces together, you can see that the white explorers who lived amongst the Inuit are not very good proxies for actual Inuit who evolved to handle such high quantities of protein. Therefore, it’s rather dishonest—and certainly of extremely low standards—for any LCHF advocates to point to the Inuit as a means of absolving themselves of having to prove the long term safety of LCHF diets. That’s really what the discussion is about.
And my guess is that Inuits HAD TO eat that much proteins!!! Just to keep warm! They were not the only ones as far as I know, weren’t some people in Northern Siberia doing the same ? They had to eat a shit ton of foods to keep warm.
The other point that seems to be eluded in these debates is this:
– who the hell wants to emulate an Inuit diet when so much variety is available at more temperate climates ?? I don’t get it. If I had to choose between whale or seal blubber and a large variety of juicy fruits and veggies (including starchy ones), it’s a no-brainer. If I had no choice but eating whale blubber, I would do it more than willingly!! But I don’t have to due to my location and local abundance of various foods. ANd I certainly don’t have to eat a shit ton of proteins just to keep warm. I don’t get why it is so important to look at the Inuit niche diet that suits them due to their very specific environment. I guess Eades and crowd don’t live in arctic regions when whale blubber is critical for survival ?!
Agreed, and that Lagakos link is a perfect example. I nailed him on this as well in my comment that is, after 3 1/2 months, still awaiting moderation.
The person Eades was replying to in that dismissive comment you linked had said that glycogen was not the overriding issue and explained that an enormous load of protein was the elephant in the room. What does Eades say in reply? Spends nearly the entire comment talking about glycogen. He addresses the portions he wants to address. The particular arguments he cannot refute go mysteriously unanswered even in a huge comment.
Looking through that comment section again, I notice that when a loyal fanboy (or girl) writes a huge comment heaping praise upon the author, that Eades replies thanking them for their thoughtful comment. I suppose thoughtful comment means “thoughtful comment in praise of me,” being that I see no such appreciation for the thoughtful comments that challenged his original thesis. Gag.
I do have to absolve Eades of one accusation that I had previously made, based on your comment here, Duck:
Blood is the only reliable means of testing for long-term ketosis. After a while of “keto adaptation,” as the VLC archbishops call it, the beta-OHB does disappear from the urine and breath but still remains in the blood. This has been pretty consistently documented by Phinney. We need blood tests in order to rule it out.
“Blood is the only reliable means of testing for long-term ketosis. After a while of “keto adaptation,” as the VLC archbishops call it, the beta-OHB does disappear from the urine and breath but still remains in the blood. This has been pretty consistently documented by Phinney. We need blood tests in order to rule it out.”
Blood tests would have been nice. However, their half-dozen tests were still sensitive enough to detect ketone bodies in both Stefansson and Anderson throughout the year-long Bellevue experiment—despite their observed adaptation. And the respiratory quotient is generally a very good indicator as to what is actually happening. Heinbecker showed that the Inuit went into an adapted starvation ketosis upon fasting—with the respiratory quotient lowering to ketogenic levels and very small amounts of ketone bodies being excreted.
All the dots point to no chronic ketosis, including the dietary intake observations. None of the researchers were surprised by the results, indicating that the Inuit just didn’t consume enough fat in their diet. They were purposefully saving their fat for fuel.
And to the New York Times obits, to verify the character of these explorers in an objective manner.
And, I’ll just add, Heinbecker was indeed looking at their respiratory quotients as another piece of the puzzle, when making his conclusions:
I mean…despite the fact that blood β-OHB wasn’t tested, there isn’t any data in these studies that suggests that the Inuit were in ketosis on their native diet. The only suggestion of ketosis comes from the high fat modified diets of white explorers while living/emulating the Inuit, who were still detected to be in ketosis after a year of the Bellevue Experiment.
Hey, Elijah. Could you cross-post this to the comments in the new post? 😉
Just have to salute you for this very French point of view. I totally agree even though my Scandinavian lineage makes me prone to all sorts of puritanism. At least I am aware of it.
The chronic keto folks need to wake up to the idea that maybe the desire to eat starchy and sweet stuff wasn’t engineered by the food industry…
I was referring to FrenchFry’s comment above about eating only blubber btw, my response didn’t quite appear where i thought it would.
Nürnberg, no prob, thanks for the cheer!
Yeah, for a french mindset, this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. But Eades and crowd must probably have this mentality, you know, like whipping themselves everyday to remind themselves that life is shit, not otherwise! haha 😀
Well I for one was on a ketogenic diet for several months. I discovered I liked protein way to much after about 3-4 months and w, as eating around 200+ grams a day which put me out of that ketosis thing. Then I added stuff and removed stuff ad nauseum… I stayed the same weight. Didn’t matter if I trained hard or slept in for days. My body fat % would adjust slightly per day. Up or down. Always hovering around the 9%-10% area. I can see a 4 pack ( I am lazy and don’t really care about the other 2). But all that on various “diets”.
The idea to stay healthy is to eat in one manner only for ever and ever is ludicrous. My anagnorisis of sorts came from a simple concept… Different foods happen in different times of year. Yes it makes sense to eat a lot of meat in the winter… Animals are easier to harvest than say a root that is frozen in the ground. But there are tons of winter foods that grow that are foregable as well. Maybe not so far up north but the amount of humans that live so far up north is negligible compared to the blue zone and temperate regions or the world.
The good doctor must realize that my confirmation bias is really solid confirmation… I tested out everything on myself. As did most of the people whom are now singing the same tune as I. Most of went the Paleo/LC/VLC/Paleoish carby/ and now we have a better idea of what we can eat/tolerate.
Eades simply reminds me of a kid on a play ground, not one of the cool kids, that made a funny joke the cool kids laughed at. So he keeps making the same joke hoping no one tires of it. Once the joke is worn out… all the cool kids are gone.
Wednesday has come and gone. Looking forward to reading this 10-point rebuttal.
Working it now. Yesterday was a “pain management day.” Decent progress, lots of sleep, and 7 episodes of Game of Thrones watched. 🙂
It’s extremely interesting Eades seemed to focus on the “icing on the cake” point and not the actual core point. There are really three main points:
1.) The Inuit aren’t in ketosis in studies, and show to become magically extremely insulin resistant when placed in studies.
2.) This is likely due to the overwhelming protein intake and relatively low fat intake.
3.) Significant fresh glycogen was consumed, and plant matter is found as well, so this is just icing on the cake.
Eades then spends all his time arguing whether or not glycogen degrades, which is pointless to the actual discussion. The actual discussion is protein intake is too high, and THE INUIT IN STUDIES ARE NOT IN KETOSIS AND HIGHLY RESISTANT TO PRODUCING KETONES.
He chose to completely ignore those, I’m sure because he had NO argument against those points.
Pity.
Precisely.
However, to make matters worse, he still managed to get #3 wrong.
What Eades attempted to do in his “confirmation bias” post is known as the Courtier’s Reply.
Only, Eades never bothered to closely read the literature he was citing—or at least he assumed that others wouldn’t bother to read it. Most people just took his word, but anyone who actually took the time to factcheck his writing would see a different story:
Cross post this one too, Duck.
Nice.
I have a comment in queue as well. I doubt it’ll ever be approved. That’s why I quit MDA. I used to be able to post comments freely. Now they all require moderation, and they never seem to get approved. Anyone selling “fat as fuel” is a snake oil salesmen. Unfortunately, “Just Eat Real Food” – my motto – doesn’t sell books well. It’s too simple and doesn’t require a complicated lifestyle that you requires a holier-than-thou guru to dial in.
Update: The Comment Dr. Michael Eades Doesn’t Want You To See.
https://freetheanimal.com/2014/10/comment-michael-doesnt.html