Patrik gets it. Most of the rest here are simply illustrating the beliefs I find so disturbing.

Does everyone here think that you can be normal and not be able to eat beef, rice, peanuts, tomatoes, apricots, fish, crustaceans, gluten, or starch?

Does everyone think that the cause of allergies to a thing is the thing? The very definition of an allergy is that the reaction is to something that should be and usually is innocuous.

Those who think I am "bashing" the GAPS diet are totally missing the point. GAPS can be profoundly effective, like an asthmatic can stay out of the ER by avoiding cats.

Would I advocate that an asthmatic allergic to Fel d 1 antigen sleep with a cat in his bed?

Of course not. Does that mean that cats are the cause of cat allergies?

Did you know the most common food allergy in Japan is to rice? The most commonly eaten food is the one most often causing allergy.

On a pacific island some well-meaning doctors showed up a few decades ago and de-wormed the population. The rate of environmental and food allergies and asthma skyrocketed. Guess what the most common food allergy was. It was octopus, because they all ate a lot of Octopus.It was not rice or beef or pork. Octopus.

Think carefully about this. Is there a pop book on Japanese amazon that focuses on healing your gut by avoiding rice? If there were, what would that tell you?

When thinking about what is wrong with modern health and whether DOCs are caused by deviation from the EM2 (evolutionary metabolic milieu, otherwise called the environment of evolutionary adaptedness) we need to consider many things. Diet is only one.

I used to think, like Eaton and Cordain and Lindeberg and my friend Robb Wolf, that most of our deviation from the EM2 was diet. Eating the wrong things or not eating enough of the right things, sites like this one are all based on this premise. Even if it takes tweaking or hacking, or adding in IF or cold therapy or vitamins or supplements, the basic premise has been that if you keep at it you can come up with a diet that will make you optimally healthy.

I used to think so too. But now I don't.

Is this some kind of disavowal of the Archevore diet? No, I think the diet is pretty great for me and most everyone who has used it.

I still think diet matters, but I no longer see the most important NADs as likely to be particular foods to avoid.

A state where everyone needs to eat a customized, idiosyncratic paleo diet to not be sick, where there are legions of people continuously altering their diets in an attempt to get healthy, and there are many many people who eat PERFECTLY in every way that still have serious DOCs is telling us something.

It is telling us to look at other things.

My bias is now that avoiding totally novel amounts of unnatural foods like excess LA and excess fructose is important, but there are some factors that are likely to be more important.

These factors relate to the history and state of your microbiome environment throughout your life, and this in turn is the major determinant of food intolerances, allergies and the epidemic of serious diseases of immune dysregulation in western society. These are likely the major cause of many of the DOCs, more than failing to eat an idiosyncratic diet you need to learn from a book or website.

Allergies and intolerances are not caused by allergens. They are caused by an unruly, undisciplined, uneducated immune system that if often well armed but blind and operating with a hair trigger.

Anyone who is really interested should pubmed Dr. Graham Rook and read whatever he has written or edited very carefully, especially if you are sick.

And don't take any action in a half-assed fashion. Very powerful ideas are like a double rifle in .470 nitro express. Effective but very dangerous. You can hurt yourself or others if you have no idea what you are doing.

Bruno, I did paleo because of IBS and pancreatitis. I could not handle dairy, grains, lots of vegetables, beans etc. Now I can eat whatever I like (but I don't eat crappy processed food because it tastes like ass compared to real food and it's simply not nutritious). I also got better through Ray Peat's work. All that easily digested food gave me a chance to get better, also frequent eating and more food than before overall. At first I was strict about keep starch low, now I do really well on a more starchy diet (potatoes, rice, even bread gives me no bother and I can get back to my old love affair with homemade sourdough). I think Kurt Harris is a humble crusader in the search of health. I really admire people who have the balls to keep it moving forward. It finally hit me that good nutrition shouldn't be restrictive and difficult to follow. It saddens me to see all the paleohack questions about lapses, binges cycled with pureness and strictness. That's a rollercoaster of stress and it's not good for you, physically or emotionally. Been there. Now I eat what I like, enjoy it, don't feel guilty and don't get sick. I am just looking at a thread named 'do you avoid looking at food picture while IFing'. That kind of sums paleo up for me. I understand that not everyone can get to the stage of eating pretty much anything, certainly not quickly. Btw, Ray Peat is the most interesting scientist discussing nutrition I have read. But I'm no cultist. Feel like I have to say that because I tend to get accused of following a 'guru'.

In my explorations, I discovered a blog called "Cheeseslave". I've been following it for a while, and recently, through the author's exploration of traditionally-prepared seeds and grains. In a way, it brings me "full circle" in my own health explorations, because it brings me back around to something close to WAPS.

I figured out about half a year ago that for me, the issue of food is more heavily related to how close to 'real' food what I'm eating is. Is it naturally fermented? Great. Is it eaten with respect to my body's own clock and sensory commentary? Great. Does it avoid over-emphasis on "replacement" foods that delve into heavy use of "alternatives" while not changing the paradigm from which I eat? Not so good.

For me, I find that anything in excess exacerbates my less-than-functional self. Staying healthy has become a conversation revolving around things I knew way back when I was a midwife (like how to feed a pregnant woman in a way that provides the best health for her and the baby, even through nausea and late-pregnancy stomach compression); through my naturopathic training (eliminating whole groups of foods just to replace them with OTHER 'imitation' foods is -not- improving health -- it's just pushing the issues off until they show up somewhere else); and through my progression into "paleo" and "primal" eating.

What does eating "primal" mean to me? It means choosing the BEST foods of the season, and eating them according to my appetite. It means learning to trust my BODY again to tell me when it's doing well, and when I need to make changes. It's about -challenging- myself to move more, do more, and avoid "societally programmed thinking" that makes me lazy about how I nourish and sustain myself and those I love. It means remembering where my food comes from, and taking pains to assure that the food that I eat is given as much chance as possible to be at peak performance itself.

I love this community, but I am pretty sure I stopped being "paleo" a year ago by the strictest standards, and I think I may have dropped off the "primal" radar recently as well, with the introduction of a few sprouted and fermented seeds that I've been experimenting with (in particular millet, which my body seems to -really- like). The point, for me, though, is that listening first to my body was a gift of the Paleo culture--it wasn't until I found this community that I found other people who had some of the same experiences that I did, and who found a real problem with the apparent solutions out there.

I'm a VERY large lady -- but I'm an ENTIRE PERSON smaller than I was when I started out on this. I didn't come on board looking for miracles -- but in a way, I found one, because, out of all of this, I found my own voice, not just where my body is concerned, but where my apparent persistence of Shamanic behaviors (which our culture now, mostly, consider to be good reasons to go get medicated), and my general approach to society were concerned. I found myself among people who, for the most part, were comfortable with someone returning to a simpler, less technologically-repressed way of interacting with our world. THAT, I think, is the gift of paleo/primal for me -- that I stopped seeing all of the technology as a filter through which my world had to pass in order to be "acceptable"... and started seeing the technology and the opinions that garner from a technological world as TOOLS -- I could use them if they worked for me, or set them aside where they massively -failed- in MY LIFE... and now I understood that I had a choice.

Whether paleo/primal is a solution for some people, I think we've developed this idea that there is some "magic" way of living that is going to solve all of our problems. No diet can do that. The best we can hope for from our food is that it nourishes us and gives us the strength and energy to use OTHER tools to become capable of everything that we want to do in our lives... and isn't that enough

I find very interesting that different people, with different ideas and backgrounds, are converging towards what seems to be the most important and (until now) overlooked health component. The Human Microbiome Project is the new Human Genome Project. This is how big is seen in the area.

However, I disagree with Dr. Harris regarding the importance of diet. As I have written in some posts (and will be writing more thoroughly in following posts), nutrition is able to modulate the response, differentiation and maturation of immune cell types. Differentiation towards T-regulatory cells or T-effector cells is controlled by intracellular proteins that play a central role in metabolism. It is true that an abnormal gut microbiota since childhood in most cases is impossible to cure, but diet can make a great contribution towards partial recovery or remission of the broad range of possible symptoms. This would be mediated both directly (on immune cells) or indirectly (via adipose tissue composition, energy balance and gut bacteria composition). I think that any measure with basis on the Old Friends Hypothesis should take into account the effect of diet and use other measures (antibiotics, fecal transplants, biofilm disruptors, etc.) as tools, not as central components.

Forgot to mention that the genotype seems to be very important for the immune response to a given microorganism, being an Old Friend or not. Not only the given combination of MHC alleles, but also, there are specific SNPs in interleukin related genes which influence the inflammatory status. Interleukin genes have been selected depending on the pathogen load of the individual as well as the specific exposure. So the immune response of an individual is also shaped by pathogen history from its geographical area and ancestors. In a more global-related manner, this co-evolution with microorganisms shaped the expression of interleukin related genes. It seems that in the case of helminths and some other parasites, we have "trusted" some part of the inflammatory balance (ie. the production of some molecules with anti-inflammatory actions, like IL-10) to these organisms, upregulating some inflammatory genes. If you take out of the equation the presence of these organisms (as produced by modern hygiene practices) you are skewed towards a basal pro-inflammatory environment.

Great topic!

I think Dr. Harris has nailed it again.

An old friend once used the phrase, "Her pathology has become her theology." I think this sums up what Dr. Harris is saying.

Going Primal has given me the opportunity to experience real health for the first time in my life--so the avoidance of certain foods (esp. gluten & FODMAPS) has been very beneficial to me.

From my new perspective, I am pursuing further healing of my gut so that I can eat more freely when socializing. Needing to avoid guacamole (while living in New Mexico) because of the FODMAPS in avocados and onions has been great incentive to do this! And thanks to Melissa & others who have posted here, I feel more confident of my body's ability to heal fully, given the time and space it needs.

In my work in the birth world, I have learned how much our U.S. medicalised pregnancy & birth practices are setting up a large percentage of the population to have impacted gut health.

Babies have a sterile gut, so it is essential that it is populated by beneficial gut bacteria if they are to enjoy good health. With over 30% of births being caesarians, many babies aren't getting exposed to the flora of their mom right away because they are missing the journey through the vagina.

Prophylactic antibiotics are killing off beneficial gut flora in many moms before they even have a chance to inoculate their baby. Even if they have a vaginal birth, many moms are suffering from gut flora imbalance that they pass on to their babies.

And the poor rates of exclusive breastfeeding until 6 months (WHO recommendations) means that many, many babies are being exposed to gluten, soy & other foods that their bodies are not yet ready to digest, further disturbing their gut environment.

I am a fine example of this. When I was born (vaginally) in the hospital in 1963, my mom was given antibiotics at the end of her pregnancy because she was fighting an infection. Also, I was not breastfed--in fact, she couldn't afford formula, so as soon as we were home, I was fed condensed milk (probably sweetened!)

There is a growing awareness of this issue among birth professionals, but really, it is up to the parents to defend the gut health of their children, if they want to truly support our population's future health.

Yes, paleo is a band-aid. No, paleo is not a cure-all. No, calling paleo a band-aid does not in any way detract from it, or from those who have successfully used it to achieve their health goals.

But for every person who has achieved vibrant health and six pack abs through eating a nutrient dense paleo diet, there are others who have failed. Go take a look at a handful of paleohacks questions for evidence of this. Most of the advice for these people who are "failing" is to "Go more paleo!" or some other version of this. It's eerily reminiscent of the vegan crowd, where people who aren't thriving must not be doing it right, or need to go even more vegan. "Try a 30 day juice fast raw protocol, yo!"

The paleo community is better than that, and even if you're already on board with Dr. Harris's skepticism about over-reaching health claims, I still think it's always good to hear another wake-up call. My first was with Mat Lalonde's AHS seminar, which basically told me to study actual science or STFU. This was another wake-up call I definitely needed, because part of me still believed that if everyone went paleo from birth, the diseases of civilization would go away. Today, I'm realizing that is most likely not true.

My question is... Did anyone actually ever think Paleo cured anything? To me it seemed clear that the diet was a long term lifestyle treatment. I hardly see anyone doing Paleo/PHD/Peat/Primal etc for the 3 months, calling themselves cured only to happily return to the SAD. What makes paleo better than a drug treatment is all around more beneficial than whatever that specific drug is targeting.

Seriously, if there was a cure for these ailments, don't you think people would be eating whatever the hell they wanted? I love eating whole foods, but if someone told me I could eat pizza and cookies everyday and not get acne, fat, etc etc then by all means I'd be having them for breakfast.

Whatever the reason you go "Paleo" or diet that fits under the "WAP, WHOLE FOODS" umbrella, they are all focused on whole foods and cutting out the junk. Of course that's a treatment and not a cure... because you have to be regular and consistent about it.

I don't think what Kurt is saying is sensational or a revelation at all. How was this not obvious from the start?

It is true though that the people going ultra restrictive are not doing themselves any good... Perhaps the remark is good for that. But who cares if he eats wheat ad lib?

Kurt Harris has, with his brief comment, delivered what may prove to be very deep insight into the nature of health & diet. (It may also disturb some of you too. C'est la vie.)

His observation that Paleo might be palliative rather than curative is non-trivial, and deserves further exploration and meaningful discussion.

Things just got very interesting again, and cheers to that!

This is like saying Robb Wolf had an intolerance for cyanide, and paleo didn't cure that intolerance, only abstinence to cyanide prevented him from a quick death. So, therefore a cyanide free diet is not curative, it's only a band-aid. (Who knows, maybe there exists a human that can tolerate cyanide, or will in the future, maybe with the same adaptation that golden bamboo lemurs have). Genetics is a funny thing.

But Seriously? It's come to this sort of nit picking semantics?

Yes, of course, there is a difference between saying someone is allergic, or intolerant to a particular food, but let's not argue about semantics so closely when in both cases they are suffering from damage caused by that food. Removing that food might not reverse the damage immediately, and maybe never fully reverse it, but continuing to ingest it is more likely to continue causing more damage and prevent the healing process.

On the other hand, people who have no reaction to wheat toxins, will happily go on eating toxins that inflame their guts and cause all sorts of problems, such as autoimmune issues, poor nutrient absorption, etc. and they'll have no idea that it's actually happening until very late in the process.

Paleo is never going to fix you so you can eat neolithic agents of disease without them causing damage. To call it a bandaid is just trying to be sensationalist, in the same way I used cyanide in the counter.

"...there are many many people who eat PERFECTLY in every way that still have serious DOCs is telling us something.

It is telling us to look at other things."

Perhaps HORMONES that have an interaction with the thymus has something to do with it.

Considering that I'm never going to have a time machine that lets me go back and do it all over the right way, the whole palliative vs. curative shtick is, IMO, a ridiculous exercise in intellectual masturbation. Fine... I have a never cured, permanently damaged, crippled physiology that needs the palliative crutch of avoiding certain foods. I can happily live with that. The diet works, regardless of any palliative vs. cure beliefs I could have about it.

I'm just going to go back to eating donuts.

Alcholics who quit alcohol are just band aiding their alcoholism (eliminating alcohol is the solution). Drug addicts should go back to using drugs once they are healed and sober, because it would just be a band aid if they didn't reintroduce the problematic substance. If you get a flat tire, don't bother looking for the nail in your driveway, just go get a new tire... we have to ELIMINATE problems, and calling it a band aid is just ridiculous and conceited thinking. Problematic foods are PROBLEMATIC. No argument, debate or counter needed.

OK, in the interest of giving Ray Peat a fair shake, I just spent 10 minutes on his website. I searched for the term "thymus" and immediately got this article, which argues THAT HIV IS NOT THE CAUSE OF AIDS. As Dave Barry would say "I am not making this up".

http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/immunodeficiency.shtml

Read it for yourself. I'll wait patiently for all the Peat Defenders to regain their senses and apologize for attacking me here. Or admit they have no critical reasoning powers. Either will do.

I don't know if he understands what GAPS is, because if he did, he would see that they are on the same side. GAPS is very restrictive at first to give the gut a chance to heal, but then it is pretty aggressive about introducing foods back into the diet as soon as you can tolerate them. It's not meant to be restrictive long-term.

I do agree that most "allergies" really do start in the gut. That's my experience definitely. However, his response here seems to imply that eliminating foods doesn't help to cure anything. I disagree, at least as much as eliminating things you react to gives your body time to heal. I know that going out and eating all the things I am sensitive to on principle would just drive my immune system bonkers.

I would like to know what he believes is the right way to go about healing your immune system. I am assuming he discusses that somewhere else, since it's not there.

(oh and on a personal note, he used way too many acronyms)

I've mentioned many times over the past year on Paleohacks(and completely ignored:) that there is way more to gut health than metabolic interventions. Gut issues involve physical issues, "scars" in the intestines.Find a good neuromuscular therapist who knows how to treat the organs of digestion and anyone, ANYONE will multiple the effects of any and all dietary interventions by a factor of two to ten !!!! It's like playing basketball with one arm vs. two. We can't go back into the womb and come out "properly", we can't go back and change out our crappy formula for breast milk of a Paleo mother, but we can try healing our gut with "two arms". A good neuormuscular therapist can provide in one hour,(actually 0ne half hour!) the equivalent of gallons of fermented food, pots of bone broth, bottles of probiotic pill. The stomach, small and large intestine need to be touched. and touched regularly. ... Kurt Harris is my favoritve Paleo maven, and he probably is correct in almost everything he says/writes, but he is basing the above view on observing one armed basketball players. There are other "health/healing" geniuses out there. Paul ST John is one of them. Let's play ball with two arms for a while and then revisit this question.

Is this idea being that our genetic make-up and developed immune system is responsible for our health more so than what we eat once we are adults? It does seem relevant, even obvious - with implications to help us fight disease in the future. However, where does that leave so-called primitive tribes/cultures who had good health that then failed once introduced to the SAD - ? The fact their health failed dramatically would seem to indicate the inflammatory, disease promoting aspects of said foods introduced.

Why then, would this happen? I am still not acquainted with a primitive group of peoples who used gluten grains as their staple, much less canola oil and sugar! Dr. Harris, if I'm not mistaken you coined the 'neolithic agents of disease'term - as much as I see the new direction and how pithy it is, I do believe there is indeed something in reality that is NAD and the avoidance of such, even in healthy peoples, is to be desired.

I do understand that you are not saying diet has no effect on health. I do understand you are saying that the issue is immune related, genetic, the early environment. And once damaged therein lies the root issue. But, as I remarked - this does not apply to primitives introduced to SAD who decline in health markedly. It would seem that diet might be more important after all - ?

To answer your question: for some people, in certain cases, food avoidance is the best available choice currently. But it is not addressing the cause, mainly because the cause is probably beyond our current comprehension.

Let's not lose sight of an important distinction, when we talk about what Paleo can be good for.

If we're only focused on the autoimmune issues prevalent in many of us and our society, that is if we are talking about obesity, thryoiditis, ASD, diabetes, celiac, corn intolerance, psoriasis and skin issues, etc., then I would agree with KGH. Paleo itself is not going to heal me and prevent bad proteins from getting in, or my immune system from attacking my own tissues. KGH's post and his response in this thread seems to be tailored to this particular issue.

But I'm worried when I see a comment like "I still think diet matters, but I no longer see the most important NADs as likely to be particular foods to avoid." Are not the foods we consider to be NADs the richest sources of LA, fructose, and phytates? We focus on foods to avoid instead of molecules to avoid, not because we are uninterested on a chemical level why they're the NADs, but because foods do not announce to us, "Hey! Linoleic acid here! Got a bunch!"

The other half of the distinction lies in longer-term diseases: not the autoimmune ones we're dealing with in this context, but things like GERD, tooth decay, heart disease, cancer, arthritis, and dementia? Few of these things affect me acutely, but if I don't care and eat SAD now, some or all will affect me eventually. I'm not just doing paleo to fix what's wrong with me now. I'm doing paleo because I care about making it to 75 with the ability to enjoy life and good years ahead of me. Avoiding the diseases of civilization, not the ones that exploded in the last 50 years but the ones we've had to endure for 5000 years, that's what I currently believe paleo can do for me. That's a cure.

It is obvious watching PaleoHacks that there are bunch of sick people out there. It's also apparent that these sick people are sick not because of the food they haven't yet eliminated from their diet but some other factor. When you're sick or reactive to everything this suggests you’re far from normal.

This shouldn't be a mystery to anyone engaging in critical thinking. A limited and strict “paleo” diet does not fit in with our evolutionary model (whatever that is supposed to mean) as it is much too limited for us to have dispersed across the globe as quickly as we did. Just take a brief moment of pause and reflect on the numerous and varied diets across the globe. We all have pretty similar life expectancy and we all eat a lot of different crap. If you had to migrate to a new land and you reacted to the food available, tough shit, your dead.

When it comes to things like deciding what not to eat we just have to use our brains. Almond flour? Coconut flour? (Insert your favorite nut here) flour? And other modern inventions that would otherwise be sub-optimal because they are a pain in the ass and otherwise don't offer any benefit. Get real. It seems that most of the damage done is done by our tendency to trust cultural fads over our common sense (who became a vegetarian without a little self-convincing?) and by environment and over sterilization.

It seems problems are caused more from what we aren't eating rather than what we are eating. What normal person eats liver anymore? Or the rest of the animal? Yet it was once pretty common. Our sickly society largely has its roots in culture i.e. when we began trusting experts and government panels over what tasted good (naturally tasted good not engineered cheese flavored horse shit). Notice we are now to the point where a fucking radiologist is dishing out health advice--"I used to think so too. But now I don't."--heard that bullshit from the same guy before.

If we want to be real we have to understand one thing, that is, as our diet has become shittier our life expectancy has gone up. Interesting. On the surface this seems like garbage logic but if we consider the idea that anytime food energy becomes available sustainably there seems to be an explosion of civilization and culture. That tendency has more to do with available energy rather than what exactly it is we are eating. Who looks at civilization as a bad thing? I would view proliferation of the species as a good thing.

It's easy to cite collateral damage like more disease and disorders etc., but I'd argue this is rather similar to what happens to commercial animals who live ass-to-ass and are fed some type of barfed up corn mixture. They get sick. They get all kinds of disease. And then they load them with antibiotics. Do you think in those same types of living conditions that if instead they replaced the corn with grass that it would really make a significant difference? Apparently not, because most of you replaced SAD with FOOD and you still are sick. You see this same thing with zoo animals, pets, etc. They all get shitty when taken out of their normal element and start suffering with different "unknown" diseases. Hmm. Immune system. Not a new idea. Undervalued? Yes. But not a new idea.

Human eating traditions don't get passed down over millennia by random chance, it's passed down because it works (so anything normal you can't eat should cause you pause), perhaps if we explored some of our passed down "common sense" with science instead of looking to science to invent or reinvent common sense we'd learn something practical and expandable and probably would progress a bit faster.

Essentially in the mainstream we've rejected the possibly that tradition has its roots in sound reasoning, rejecting our ancestors as primal idiots, eating these random weird diets, etc. We can't even fathom the possibility that in some way tradition might be a form of "science" itself, tested (we are still here) and sound, because there aren't any fucking bar graphs and pie charts to go along with it.

Anyway stop taking folks so seriously things like "I'm starting to think" or "I believe" should make any rational person pause and investigate for themselves rather than fall into the same "expert" cycle.

Paleo may be a band aid, but it is a band aid that prevents further infection/diseases via inflammation.

Dr. H is right about one thang. Paleo is incomplete in one aspect. It's not just the food. It's the environmental toxins, germs, immunization shots, cleaning agents, cooking utensils, bacteria, and anti-bacteria brought about by our antiseptic, modern lifestyle. Also factor in the inflammation caused by our electronic and communications gadgetry, including our beloved microwave.

Drs. Sinatra and Hyman do talk about these. Admittedly, it's a broad and subjective realm that's hard to tackle. But it should be addressed given how little we know about their impact. I do agree that food alone isn't gonna fix autoimmunity. And it wasn't just food that brought about my autoimmunity. I'm not talking about genetics. I'm talking about that big X Factor, the environment.

I think all the detractors in this thread combined have probably read < 10% of the literature on the subject as Dr Harris. You can't just follow all the blogs guys and think you know that the hell is going on, it doesn't work like that.

Besides palliative and curative, what about preventative? I'm not sure how many paleos actually thought the lifestyle truly cured existing problems, but I'm pretty sure a lot of people believed it prevented the creation of the problem in the first place for those who didn't have it yet, e.g. the idea that gluten -> leaky gut -> new autoimmune problems for some people.

Now it was mentioned gluten is not a NAD, though I'm not sure how things are classified as a NAD or not. Is it because some people can eat it just fine? Then if some people can eat excessive amounts of fructose or LA (whether now or in the future), does that mean those things are not NADs either? What about lactose for lactose intolerant people? Where do we draw the line, which seems to be what the argument(s) is really about. This is especially confusing since the archevore site itself also says to avoid gluten (though I'm guessing maybe his position's changed since then). I'm suspecting maybe NADs are something that needs to be defined on a per-individual basis. So it is technically incorrect to say, this this and that are NADS, and this this and that are not NADS without qualifying with "for X individual"

Maybe redundant with the what is a NAD question above, but if paleo neither cures nor prevents anything, then it would seem there is no good (health) reason to promote it to anyone not already suffering from problems, no more than it's a good idea to prescribe any other form of treatment to those who are healthy.

Additionally, IS there something remotely resembling a cure? And/or what should we do then in the meantime for optimal health?

Can just someone tell me what to eat and when and what not to ?

I dont agree with Dr H.

Edit: My point with the athlete analogy is, that athletes go through stress. They reduce that stress by consuming adequate carbs. Peat's suggestion that people should eat adequate carbs is not some kind of cherry-picked idiotic claim. Everybody has a different level of carbohydrate need. Some people need more carbs than others. Peat recognizes this. If you don't get enough carbs, the liver can't have adequate T4 to T3 turnover because there is insufficient glycogen. FFA's begin to be used as primary energy which also shuts down the thyroid gland. Free radical by products result from FFA oxidation and you begin to have a need for antioxidants. Vitamin E becomes deficient, and the need for vitamin e greatly increases. Fatty acid oxidation and release induces prostaglandin modulation of the aromatase enzyme which will convert testosterone to estrogen, furthering the metabolism's shift for burning fat for fuel instead of glucose. Ever smell a females breath when estrogen is spiked? Yep Acetone! Then, it gets worse, cortisol is released to induce gluconeogenesis from the liver to break down amino acids released from lean tissue. Your body begins to eat itself, and your myo-catabolic environment encourages the repartitioning end result of less lean muscle and more fat mass. The ratio becomes worse. Since you are mainly running on catacholamines on a low carb diet, you are continuously cold in the periphery. You get very shitty sleep because you can't quiet down at night as a result of this. Been there done that for 3 years. Low Carb Dieting was a waste of time for me, and only made me worse. Paleo dieting is not inherently bad, but I bet any of you can't even describe what paleo is or what it should be? What did our ancestors eat 10000 years ago? Did you personally go back in time and observe them? Is it better to use the observations of Weston Price and other explorers, and current observation for what indigenous populations REALLY eat? Probably!

But I gotta say that one thing Dr. H claims is that there are other aspects to health besides diet. I agree wholeheartedly, but do realize that whether or not these environmental aspects play a huge role, there still is a vast degree of physiological processes that are able to resist these issues. He mentions Doctors visiting islands with natives who had parasites, and curing them. We are not natives!!! He mentions that a large majority of people had a food allergy that was a result of a frequency problem. Since when has there been any culture pre 17th century who didn't consume just about the same foods every day? If you were a swizerland dairy farmer, guess what you were eating the next day? Milk, eggs, and possibly some grains. This is obviously not scientific evidence rather than observational and epidemiological research but by god Dr. H, if you are going to argue the old food frequency thing, you better be arguing with the entire globe before three hundred years ago. Could he be right with this? sure, but it says nothing about his disagreement with Peat, other than maybe he doesn't feel like its healthy to eat the same foods every day, which is based on "iffy" science and opinion rather than fact.

I just want to tell my story here. I thought paleo was the answer to my diet problems and not just a sticking plaster/band aid. I believed in it, I loved the idea of it and I saw so many people do well on it, though I continued to have problems whilst on it (strictly). And I was always having a nagging feeling about people I saw on raw vegan diets who were doing just as well as those on paleo.

I resent the fact that some paleo people think paleo is the ONLY way to eat, just because it works for them. From my experience, I see it as amazing for some and disastrous for others.

I continued to search; I tried metabolic typing which advocates very different diets according to your metabolism and so far it is the only thing that has 100% worked with me. The beautiful thing is that some people need paleo, some people need vegan, some people need a very broad range of carbs/proteins for optimum health - and many people are on a life long learning curve to try and discover this optimum recipe which is totally unique to each person, based on genetic and environmental factors. My metabolic typing nutritionist has been practising for 15 years and told me everyone who passes through her door is unique and requires an individual diet plan.

I have come a long way on my diet journey, from raw vegan to strict paleo, I have now settled into a metabolically-typed diet which is based on 45% low purine proteins/low fat and 55% low G.I.carbs - and this has hit the spot. This I know now, is not a band aid but a long lasting answer.

I call this my own primitive diet (although it is not what one would call a classic paleo diet by any stretch of the imagination) as I know there was a group of people somewhere in the world (nearer to the equator than I am now) who ate my diet indigenously and thrived on it - they lived in a habitat which matched my particular fuel mix perfectly.

For many people, their 'spot' will be paleo - (varying degrees of strictness) for others it will only ever be a band aid which allows them to move away from a SAD diet and become more conscious of their eating habits. It will be a springboard for further exploration - as it was for me.

As someone else mentioned on this thread, we must continue to be forward-thinking and not get stuck in a rut about all of this, as that would truly be a Neanderthal way of viewing the world and all the myriad people who live within it.

It may not be as magical as we'd hoped, but eating mostly real food probably isn't going to go out of style any time soon.

What about WGA and gluten problems in non-celiacs? Is Kurt saying that wheat isn't a NAD anymore, or just that the gut flora is more of the underlying issue? I've always assumed that wheat can cause leaky gut, so it's pertinent to avoid it in novel amounts (a piece of bread a day isn't too big of a deal, but why eat wheat at all?)