BACKGROUND
There was a paleohacks thread yesterday about how much we should trust various sources of information. We’re lucky to have some very smart people posting interesting information on paleohacks, such as Ron Rosedale, Cate Shanahan, and The Quilt.
Lately there have been many posts about people having positive results with The Quilt’s Leptin Rx. The science is complex and largely over my head, but it definitely piqued my curiosity. Last week, I decided that I may give the protocol a go. But as an information junkie, I decided to scan through what the Internet could tell me about The Quilt and his ideas before diving into the protocol.
I found some very positive things, but several fairly disturbing things as well. Please excuse this extremely lengthy hack, but I do believe it is of value.
POSITIVES
Let me start by saying that it's clear Jack has some very positive things to contribute to the paleosphere:
- Quilt is a neurosurgeon. Thus, he definitely knows science. Has a strong grasp of several fields, from cell-level to organ-level.
- Quilt gives free advice and will personally answer your questions. Very cool for a busy surgeon.
- Those who follow his protocol appear to be having success.
- The guy can think out of the box. He is curious about all aspects of health. He lost a bunch of weight, and thus walks the walk in addition to talking the talk.
- Quilt can be both serious and funny. See Halloween 2011 version of Quilt. He is a longstanding and active member of paleohacks who often provides interesting viewpoints.
NEGATIVES
In looking into his writings further though, I found some disturbing trends. Perhaps I am over reacting? Misinterpreting?
Quilt on Paul Jaminet’s blog
A few months ago Quilt made the following statement..."There are fifteen variables one has to consider about a healthy long life span. Paleo hit about four of them. The rest matter too. Paul Jaminet has asked me to write him something up for his blog and I need to get that done this week."
At the time, when asked about this, Paul Jaminet stated that he did not know who The Quilt was, nor had he asked this person to write anything.
Quilt on cancer reduction through nipple massages
Quilt: "....one nipple massage will reduce your risk of breast CA by 50% because of the sensitivity to oxytocin....."
Quilt on MUFAs
Quilt: "Mufa's are more sensitive to oxidation. This is why avocado brown so fast when cut. Unstable."
Matthew: "The browning of avocados has nothing to do with mono-unsaturated fatty acids. It is an enzymatic reaction cross-linking phenolic compounds to protect the damaged fruit against microbes."
Kamal: "'Tis true. The culprit is exposed enzymes, not fatty acid oxidation. You can't just go around making stuff up to prove your points. Well, technically you can."
(Current lipid biochemistry indicates that MuFA are very stable...This fact is widely accepted)
Quilt on Mindfulness
Paleohacks user kamal calls out Quilt for making up statistics:
Quilt: "Mindfulness has shown 56% reduction in cancer recurrence.Show me one drug that even comes close to that number?
Kamal: "Ummm...no. Most of the trial research was done here in Boston at MGH, UMass, and Beth Israel. Neither meta-analyses nor individual trials show a 56% reduction. During the summer that I interned at the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind-Body Medicine, no one (not even the venerable Dr. Benson) threw around those numbers. I'd ask you to cite your sources, but that does not appear to be your modus operandi."
Kamal: "Yesterday, I saw a claim he made about mindfulness reducing cancer recurrence by 56%. Luckily, I had an internship at the biggest mindfulness research center in the country a few years ago, and knew he was wrong. But who is going to do "due diligence" just to make sure that someone isn't making stuff up?"
Just a few of Quilt's factual errors (overstatements, uninformed speculation, possible plagarism)
Quilt says, "My principles are based around optimizing life through science not opinion”, though responses often appear to be his opinion rather than substantiated or cited scientific (fact/reasoning).
The following examples (taken from paleohacks) are used to illustrate various errors of fact, faulty reasoning, uninformed speculation and possible plagarism.
Quilt: "Leptin control [sic] fat disposition in body parts. This is why women have curves and men dont. Moreover, people with dosordered leptin function have major body comp and fat deposit issues. See any HIV patient as a great example of the other side of this coin."
akd: "jesus, lipodystrophy is a side effect from some antiretroviral drugs used to manage HIV infections. not everyone who takes antiretrovirals gets it. its not a function fo the HIV infection, and looking up the cause i dont see the word "leptin" anywhere.
RG73, medical student and paleohacks participant questions a statement made by The Quilt
Quilt: "Cross country running or skiing plus paleo is an oxymoron and might eventually kill you via apoptosis or senescence which ever your programmed for first".......I'll pass"
RG73: "Citation that running shortens telomeres please? Running is going to cause apoptosis? Seriously? That makes zero evolutionary sense. Mitochondria work against our telomeres? Separate genomes. What is the biological mechanism? Werner et al. 2008, Werner et al. 2009, Puterman et al. 2010, LaRocca et al. 2010. I mean I could go on with this all day."
ZZ: "Per what I've read on Whole Health Source and PaNu sites, we want to keep PUFA <= 4%."
Quilt: "This number comes from Mary Enig and truthfully no one knows if it is true."
Jay: "The 4% figure does not come from Mary Enig. It comes from real research done by Lands..."
Quilt possibly making up stuff about gelatin:
Quilt: "All gelatin that is commercially produced is loaded with excitotoxins. So i would never eat it. If you make your own with bone broth that is awesome."
Kamal: "Please explain how home made bone broth (producing gelatin) is different than gelatin made from pig skin and powdered in amino acid profile. Both have glutamine. Most (paleo) people get the regular, unhydrolyzed gelatin."
Jay: "QUILT, this is just mechanistic speculation. Moreover, it doesn't even seem well-founded."
Matthew: "Interesting fact: A breakfast made up beef containing 50 grams of protein can contain 10 grams of glutamate. In contrast 10 grams of gelatin contains only 0.5 grams of glutamate."
One of many instances of Quilt posting something but not acknowledging that the source is another website, not him (mild, perhaps unintentional "borrowing" of ideas)...
Matthew: "By the way, have the LEF been pinching your work? I realise the above quote is from your blog. If you look under the Vitamin K heading at paragraph 37-38 on this page it looks quite similar to the last six lines above..."
Quilt willy-nilly attacks other paleo gurus even when they have never heard of Quilt. See here for Kurt Harris getting pissed off by Quilt...
Dr. Kruse: "While i like both of these guys, neither one has any clinical experience treating cancer patients. They read literature. When kurt was a practicing doc he spent time in a dark room with films not patients."
Kurt Harris MD: "I suppose referring to my by my Christian name when I have never met you supports the impression you know a single thing about my clinical practice or career.You don't. I have had varied and intimate contact with patients doing interventional radiology, including neurointerventional for over 25 years. For 6 years I performed a person consultation with all of my patients at my own private imaging center - that would be about 12,000 in-person patient encounters. This is where I started treating patients with my diet, through this local contact. And I continue to do it locally and in internet consultation, even if you don't know it because I am not as loud about it as some...I am not clear on what being an oncologist has to do with anything, but you are no more of an oncologist than I am. You are a dentist and neurosurgeon. Try sticking to your crackpot theorizing rather than knocking a radiologist and physicist for the "madness" of thinking you might not die if you eat a potato...."
Quilt sometimes predicts that eating things he doesn’t like will kill you, making erroneous blanket statements...
ROB: “hadn't had dairy in close to 10 months and finally binged on close to 400 grams of sour cream daily for three days, and I feel great.”
Quilt: “I say eat it.......It will keep me busy down the road...Dairy equal insulin and eventually insulin leads to death. The great circle of life encapsulated.”
Lee: “But doc...full fat, heavy cream for instance, doesnt spike insulin, does it?”
Ikco: “Dairy isn't dairy. Source and type matter enormously. And scare tactics are just lame.”
So I’m looking for some input. Given the type of information I found above, how should I approach the Quilt’s ideas? Sorry if the post sounded antagonistic, but these are simply the facts that I found using a google search and a paleohacks search. I am genuinely interested in what people’s views are on this. Quilt is providing a potentially useful and absolutely free source of information, but I want to know how much I can trust that information, given what I found above (which presumably is just a small slice of what’s out there).
