Melissa, I love you and your blog, I am a fan...but Rosedale is not saying fish and chicken are healthier than beef or lamb. He is saying in the first 3 weeks, to become a more efficient ketone burner, limit SAT fat till you are on the beam. Then, if you have no elevated ferritin, eat lamb, beef.I have eaten with him many times as he lathered bearnaise sauce over a steak, only round 5 oz. though. Read Rosedale's work and this is all there.

On a personal note, I don't get the trashing of giants, like Rosedale,who, for over 30 years have been healing, helping, promoting aging research, fighting big pharma, pissing off most every commercial conglomerate and ignorant doctors not interested in expanding their understanding of ageing. He is the mentor to the Drs. Eades, mentor to Dr. Eric Westman, debated Dr. Dean Ornish on PBS and trashed him so bad that Ornish threatened to sue PBS if they aired the program...I have seen it.

Dr. Rosedale is not here to promote CW, far from it. He was talking insulin 25 years ago, leptin since it was discovered. While most of us here on PH were still in grammar school, he was fighting this war. Not when it is becoming popular now...but long ago when there are no support systems or comrades in arms.

He became so frustrated with the US systems and medical establishments that he retreated to India, where for the last 4 years, he has been conducting free retreats, where he has personally lost a fortune, training obese and diabetics here how to regain health. This movement sprung up only since he has been gone. He would rather be in India where people are more open to this than in the US where he has had to fight alone.

Seeing that the landscape is changing in the US, he is willing to get back in the battle. He is the ally of all here. He is a brilliant man and the debates are not over on the better ways to approach health, far from it.

So please, everyone, support getting all the players together at the next AHS meeting to roundtable and debate there, meet and discuss and not just "present". We have a seat on a movement that can change the course of health here. Lets fight together, with a sense of humor...and read each other's blogs, like Hunt Gather Love and Dr. Rosedale's.

Dear Dr. Rosedale,

My "hilarious" comment was an immediate thought I posted on facebook and I certainly didn't mean it as an actual response to your comments, which would require being much more thoughtful. In that sense I apologize that it made it's way back to you.

I agree that I have "some degree of leptin and insulin resistance," and thank God I do because the alternative to having "some degree" of resistance to any hormone would be infinite sensitivity. This is of course impossible to have, but insofar as one could asymptotically approach infinite sensitivity to a hormone it would probably spell complete disaster for the body as it would make it more difficult to regulate the response to these hormones.

This is somewhat analogous to saying, "Chris, like everyone else, drives slowly to work to some degree." If I drove too quickly, I'd get in a car accident, and although I'm not an expert in physics my understanding is that if I drove at a speed approaching infinitity I would spontaneously combust. Clearly if I took a day to get to work every day, I'd never get anything done, but you can't fault me for driving (or biking, or walking) at a reasonable pace consistent with traffic norms.

I don't speak out of total ignorance about hyperglycemia and AGE formation. I'm quite familiar with the concept of non-enzymatic glycation as my life is mostly consumed with reading the literature and performing original research on this topic right now. You might find this blog post of mine interesting:

Where Do Most AGEs Come From? O Glycation, How Thy Name Hast Deceived Me!

http://blog.cholesterol-and-health.com/2011/10/where-do-most-ages-come-from-o.html

Most AGEs come from dicarbonyls, not directly from glucose. As such, targeting even normoglycemic levels of blood glucose as the primary culprit in their formation strikes me as unlikely to be very productive. I have never seen any evidence that diabetes is a "linear, no-threshold" expression of intrinsically toxic blood glucose, and it is not because I haven't searched the scientific literature for evidence that normoglycemic fluctuations in blood glucose are harmful. I have.

I don't have time to debate this extensively here, but I did want to offer a brief apology for carelessly laughing off your statement, and to clarify why I nevertheless disagree with it.

Chris

I apologize for having to give only a short clarification and reply at the moment.. I am currently on a flight with just my iPad... As far as saturated fat..it has been quite clearly shown that the ease of burning saturated fats is directly correlated with chain length. I don't have citations with me but I believe that I had posted some for a prior question or comment on this site. (Long chain)saturated fats have also long been shown to impair insulin sensitivity.. See articles by Storlein. However, these studies like most all nutrition studies are done on high carb adapted individuals. It has been shown by me and others that it takes several weeks to adapt well to a very low (non fiber) carb, higher fat diet, especially when protein is also kept in moderation, therefore reducing alternate gluconeogenic substrates. This is why I recommend reduced long chain sat fats for the first few weeks. It seems to make the all important transition easier MCTs are great always.

My diet arose almost 2 decades ago to best treat diabetics and CV patients as models for accelerated aging. it also became very clear to me then that we all have nearly the same metebolic problems that they do. we all have some degree of insulin and leptin resistance, some degree of vascular damage, etc.; we all age the same way, and what would be best for them would be best for us all, not just for diabetes, heart and vascular disease, excess fat loss, and even cancer, but to treat what I feel very robust science is showing to be a major root that helps to determine the rate of aging itself...nutrient sensing hormones tying into allocation of energy and genetic expression of maintenance and repair vs. cellular reproduction. After testing many hundreds of insulins and leptins, I have found my diet to be the best at keeping these major nutrient sensing hormones low.

As far as protein, I saw quite clearly when I started treating diabetics,that high protein would not lower blood glucose near as much as higher fat. Later, it has appeared clear that a high protein diet would elevate the other major nutrient sensor, mTOR, inhibiting benefits of caloric restriction, and possibly contributing to cancer. I introduced this concept in a talk I gave perhaps now over 5 years ago... http://www.meandmydiabetes.com/2010/05/07/ron-rosedale-protein-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

I believe that what I have been recommending now for 2 decades, a low non-fiber carbohydrate, higher fat, moderate protein to meet needs only diet, is being shown to be the best and healthiest diet. Newer science including that of leptin, mTOR, and the biology of aging only has served to support this. The other original low carb approaches have all seemed to modify their original recommendations to more approach mine.

I am being told "to turn off all electronic devices" for our landing, so I'll perhaps comment more later. Thanks for the interest.

What it really distills down to is this; if a diet or nutritional protocol allows one to better burn fatty acids or ketones as a primary fuel, then it is likely to be quite healthy. If it forces one to burn glucose, then it is not. Eating more protein than necessary for maintenance and repair, thus allowing for gluconeogenesis, glucose burning, and elevated mTOR will not be healthy.

Eating easily burned shorter chain saturated fats is great,. Eating longer chain harder to burn saturated fats when one is not adapted to burning them, will not be so good.

What these two different approaches have in common is a total lack of supporting science. And yes, when you are bucking so-called "conventional wisdom" and interested in being about science and not opinions, or touting how you are bridging the gap between science and medicine, you better darned well bring it. In Rosedale's case, he says carbs "spike" leptin and this leads to leptin resistance. This is demonstrably false. Leptin is not "spiked" by dietary intake of any macronutrient. He is also of the mistaken belief that consuming carbohydrates causes insulin resistance, when the opposite has been shown to be the case time and again in controlled metabolic ward contexts where the results can be verified. In Kruse's case, I've yet to see any explanation for his arbitrary recommendations. Big protein breakfast? Does this timing and high protein intake alter leptin receptor responsiveness? No snacking? Same question. How do you know you've healed your broken receptors? What epigenetic switches is he talking about and on what levee in Kruse-terroir can we find out what tests he does and how they are interpreted in the context of leptin? There actually is some science out there linking high protein diets with improved leptin sensitivity, but one comes across these things not because of but in spite of Kruse's claims. IGF-1 is a negative in his Quilt Survivability equation, WTF one makes of that!

In his response to Paul Jaminet, Rosedale's own references failed to support his absurd notion that we are all diabetic. Yes, it is absurd. The mortality rates were lowest with fasting glucose levels flirting with a prediabetes diagnosis in one study he used to state his case. There were no differences in all cause mortality for the bottom 90% of subjects in 2hr glucose in another. But at least he puts up relevant cites (for the most part) rather than sending you out to do your own homework to substantiate his claims rather than at least listing one or two from which he developed his theories.

Both of these plans will work for some for the same reasons any low carb plans work for some, or a restrictive plan of any sort works for some.

As for longevity, well, I don't see how having the metabolism of an aging person (e.g. becoming an insulin resistant, lower RQ fat burner) will enhance lifespan. And speaking of age, I'm sorry but as with Dr. Davis, I'm just not seeing some sort of youthful vitality in these folks that I don't see in many of my carb-eating friends of presumably similar age. How old are these guys anyway? I'm not saying they look old or young or whatever, they just don't look any different. And if this metabolic slowing with age is somehow protective and life extending, how does one explain these ROSsified, carb burning nonagenarian spring chicks??

They both have a lot of great things to offer the standard american dieter, however I have a couple of issues with Dr Rosedale's protocol....

DON’T BE AFRAID OF FAT--BUT EAT GOOD FAT This is a high fat diet, so if you are hungry, you may eat fat! But stick to the good fats found in nuts, avocados, fatty fish, olives, etc.

Nuts? I don't know anyone who actually thrives on nuts, they seem more like a food people enjoy and eat as many as they can without having trouble.

LIMIT SATURATED FAT FOR THE FIRST THREE WEEKS When you want to lose weight, what you really want to lose is saturated fat. So stop eating it, at least for the first three weeks you are on the meal plan. Pass on the beef, pork, lamb and most dairy products and eat primarily fish, nuts, chicken, vegetables and no fat cheese. After the first three weeks on the meal plan, you can eat foods that are higher in saturated fat (such as lean beef, lamb and pork) although those wishing to continue losing weight should not eat very much of these foods.

I think those wishing to lose weight can eat lean beef, or any kind of beef for that matter. Also, people that are all of a sudden giving up grains/starches/etc might have a hard time feeling satiated without red meats and sat fat... And I'd have an issue with telling someone they can eat low fat cheese.

The major difference between my program and others, is that it was initially designed to treat the deeper roots of the chronic diseases of aging such as diabetes and heart disease, and it does this extremely well. Getting to the roots of disease reveals that all disease is a disease of communication, particularly of insulin and leptin.Treating symptoms will only serve to increase the wealth of pharmaceutical companies while making people more sick. Diabetes is not a disease of blood sugar but a disease of telling sugar what to do. Osteoporosis is not a disease of calcium. People with osteoporosis have lots of calcium in their arteries. It is a disease in telling calcium where to go. Heart disease is not a disease of cholesterol. Every living cell membrane requires cholesterol.

However, attitudes such as Masterjohn's and Mellisa's below who laugh at the notion of everyone being somewhat diabetic arise from misunderstanding and ignorance of the true underlying roots of disease. It is not “hilarious” that this sort of attitude is killing millions of diabetics treated with drugs and diet that worsen insulin resistance, and killing millions more with other chronic diseases.

As I have said for 2 decades and here several times, and I will repeat and keep saying until properly heard; diabetes is not a disease of blood glucose; it is a disease of hormone signaling, especially leptin and insulin. Chris and Mellisa, like everyone, has some degree of leptin and insulin resistance, and therefore some degree of the major underlying root of diabetes and other diseases of aging, and should be treated as such; the sooner, the better...

I agree with Dr. Rosedale on this. I think the abnormal has unfortunately become the norm. One world famous endo commented to me that it is "normal" for the A1C to rise with age. Why would it be "normal" absent a change in diet? If the anything under 6 A1C is so normal, then why does diabetes expert Dr. Richard K. Bernstein see so many so-called normal people suffering from what are usually termed diabetic complications and neuropathies etc? I wonder if the ever rising A1C is only "normal" after poor fetal programming (obese diabetic mothers, toxemia etc) followed by poor infant diet (soy and sugary frankenfood baby "foods") followed by decades of excessive and highly addictive carbohydrate and sugar overloads and far too little excercise followed by disrupted circadium rhythms and lack of sleep, our addictions to computers/blue light, overwork and sky high stress hormones etc etc etc...I think it's true that most people under 30 can eat loads of crap and still have great labs. But maybe it's just the calm before the diabetes storm. When the storm hits may vary depending upon how much an individual was exposed the the aforementioned factors. I think there is a big problem with docs just looking at fasting glucose because by the time that gets into the diabetic range, there are years of too high but undetected postprandial sugars. Docs won't order A1C unless fasting is high. The high postprandials go undetected. Absent a virus or autoimmmune attack -- diabetes doesn't just happen overnight but that's how it seems when docs only rely on a yearly annual fasting glucose. Now diabetes is huge business -- the testing strips cost a fortune-- ditto for the drugs and even if it's "covered" by insurance -- society pays. Meters in all kinds of colors have become virtual fashion accessories. The ADA is largely a menace in my view.

Rosedale protocol will do the job simply because its very limiting and if you limit your food choices you gradually lose weight because you are not hungry for the same food constantly. Its hard to sustain on negative side. Limiting carbs will do the job for majority of people but he also limits SFA in the beginning to speed up things (I guess this is part of propaganda and not crucial part of weight loss, people like to see results fast). No snaking of junk foods but binging on nuts has additional role of providing good source of nutrition with virtually no down sides and lots of magnesium to combat ins. resistance.

Array of vitamins and other supplements will cover most of the eventual malnutrition.

Similar protocols that are not that limiting work equally well, I think. Supplements he recommends are probably responsible for good part of the success.

For most people, I think SFA, protein and vegetable restriction are not important that much and results will be equally good and much more sustainable. Perhaps some people who can't loose weight no matter what they try could try his protocol in full.

Most of the other points are good, like slow eating and exercise after dinner.

The Quilt also places importance on breakfast.

Can anyone else spot the Gen Y peeps and their lack of appreciation that some, in any, if not all communities, industries, fraternities, clubs, think-tanks have forgotten more than they currently know? All must understand where the movement has been to do the same for where it is at. This constant narrow mindedness and quick from the hip smack downs are not adding to a debate but a limiter to growth. By all means question. Be more careful to dismiss so quickly. You can never fast track experience.

Neither is much good if you're not and have never been fat, I have to say.

ETA: Most of these recs will produce fat loss in people of any size. If you don't have fat you can afford to lose you have to modify significantly.

To single out a few, if I want to maintain my weight/build muscle and not feel like shit I've found it necessary to do the direct OPPOSITE of: avoiding starch, eating small meals, limiting saturated fat, eating only to satisfy hunger, eating small meals, not eating before bedtime, eating slowly, exercising after your last meal and before bed.

ETA2: By 'fat' I did not mean obese or very large; I should have said 'high body fat percentage' or even 'not lean'. This applies to most Americans no matter if their BMI is 19 or 40.

2000 views in 2 days? This has become like the Colisseum. Ler's throw them to the lions.