Vitamin D: It's Not Just Another Vitamin

If I described a substance with the following properties, what would you guess it was?-It's synthesized by the body from cholesterol-It crosses cell membranes freely-It has its own nuclear receptor-It causes broad changes in gene transcription-It acts in nearly every tissue-It's essential for healthThere's no way for you to know, because those statements all apply to activated vitamin D, estrogen, testosterone and a number of other hormones. Vitamin...

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DART: Many Lessons Learned

The Diet and Reinfarction Trial (DART), published in 1989, is one of the most interesting clinical trials I've had the pleasure to read about recently. It included 2,033 British men who had already suffered from an acute myocardial infarction (MI; heart attack), and tested three different strategies to prevent further MIs. Subjects were divided into six groups:One group was instructed to reduce total fat to 30% of calories (from about 35%) and...

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We're Starting to Get It

I just read an interesting post on the Food is Love blog. According to the USDA (admittedly not always the most reliable source of accurate information, but we’ll go with it for the moment), the number of farmers markets in the US has risen significantly in the last ten years, from 2,746 in 1998 to 4,685 in 2008. If we get another 580 markets, an increase possible in the next year or two if trends continue, we’ll have tripled the number of recorded markets since 1994.Furthermore,Plenty of farmers markets don’t get tallied in official lists, of...

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One Last Thought

In Dr. Lindeberg's paleolithic diet trial, subjects began with ischemic heart disease, and glucose intolerance or type II diabetes. By the end of the 12-week study, on average their glucose control was approaching normal and every subject had normal fasting glucose. Glucose control and fasting glucose in subjects following the "Mediterranean diet" did not change significantly. He didn't report changes in cardiovascular risk factors. Why was the paleolithic diet so effective at restoring glucose control, while the Mediterranean diet was not?...

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Paleolithic Diet Clinical Trials Part II

There were a number of remarkable changes in both trials. I'll focus mostly on Dr. Lindeberg's trial because it was longer and better designed. The first thing I noticed is that caloric intake dropped dramatically in both trials, -36% in the first trial and a large but undetermined amount in Dr Lindeberg's. The Mediterranean diet group ended up eating 1,795 calories per day, while the paleolithic dieters ate 1,344. In both studies, participants were allowed to eat as much as they wanted, so those reductions were purely voluntary. This again...

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Paleolithic Diet Clinical Trials

If Dr. Ancel Keys (of diet-heart hypothesis fame) had been a proponent of "paleolithic nutrition", we would have numerous large intervention trials by now either confirming or denying its ability to prevent health problems. In this alternate reality, public health would probably be a lot better than it is today. Sadly, we have to settle for our current reality where the paleolithic diet has only been evaluated in two small trials, and medical research spends its (our) money repeatedly conducting failed attempts to link saturated fat to every...

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Acne Anecdotes

Thanks for all the interesting comments on the last post. Here are some highlights:Methuselah:I had bad acne as a teenager and although the worst of it did clear up for as I got older (this seems to be the pattern, so presumably there are hormones other than insulin involved,) I still had spotty skin into my 20s and 30s. When I went onto a Paleo diet my skin cleared up totally.Neil:I am lucky enough to have reasonable skin already, but reducing carbs and vegetable oils has at the least coincided with a notable improvementJeff:I used to get......

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