I got this yesterday from Dr. Mercola. I'm not sure what to think about it at this point.

https://articles.mercola.com/sites/...8&rid=130866958

He's just another Dr. Oz to me. Largely full of it.

I believe that Mercola went off the deep end a long time ago and any credibility he might once have had is long gone.

I also am not a fan of Dr Mercola (nor other doctors who jumped on the keto bandwagon without understanding its limitations) but do agree with him that a "high fat keto diet" is not optimal long term. He is evaluating a Review paper of many other studies which indicated the cardiology problems before. https://www.sciencedirect.com/scien...4000410#abs0002

Doctors like Peter Attia (Outlive) evaluated the research 3+ years ago and abandoned Keto diets and fasting except for therapeutic use. Good info in his book on the ideal approach to managing CVD risk and blog posts.


Elevated blood lipids on "keto" are a huge confusing topic, but after ten years of defending my wonky cholesterol results (to my Duke GP) I added more nutrient dense healthy carbs, like vegetables, fruit and NF yogurt, and substituted the heavy cream, high fat cheese, fatty meats, bacon, sausage, pepperoni, pork rinds etc. with healthier choices to improve both my lipid panel and nutrition. My low carb diet is completely satiating for fewer calories with smart substitutions and it easily maintains my goal weight, nutrition and health markers.

You're all probably right. I've known about Mercola for at least 20 years and have always had some misgivings about him and what he says. I was also put off by his commercialism with his very expensive vitamins etc.

I got a used library book of Mercola's called "Fat for Fuel", from 2017 I think. It actually has some very good technical yet understandable information about mitochondria as well as other basic information that I know to be on target from other things I've read over the years. I haven't finished the book yet, so I don't know if he comes up with anything wacky in the stuff I haven't read. But since I was reading this particular book, I was kind of surprised to see that article come from him.

Well, over 20+ years I've done a lot of reasonable diets and I ALWAYS go back to Atkins '72 to lose weight effortless,ly easily, painlessly, and relatively fast. I wouldn't live on that diet forever, but it has its uses short term.

Mixing truth with the lie is a very old technique. I think what works best for each of us is something we have to figure out.

I did Atkins backwards, but carnivore did wonders, and I could do 20 grams of carbs, easily. But now, still struggling with autoimmune, I'm oxalate clearing with Sally K Norton techniques, and it's awesome.

But this creates problems out in the world, where my "plant based content" is deemed far too low, and I will suffer from lack of fiber. When my system complains if I have salad two days in a row. But this doesn't happen with coconut wraps.

In addition, I still eat lots of fermented fat, which makes a big difference for me. I put cream cheese or sour cream in my smoothies, especially in the winter. I think that might make a difference, because we don't eat cultured butter anymore. I love it, but it's for making veggies taste better, IMO. I'm very sensitive to their bitterness, too. I love sour, but not bitter. And I don't get along with plants, generally.

So your own efforts with Atkins Induction/Keto might be a case of using it for the therapeutic effect. While I do well with lots of protein and fat. But recently, gf bread for satiety, a starch, does work.

Maybe a summer thing. Traditionally, people would have been eating low carb in the winters, before we stored food.

How about watching someone that actually reviews the studies, finds the gray areas, and can explain all that?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tla-JrqhhHI

And regarding Mercola: If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's Mercola. (That sounded funny until I typed it out. I'm insinuating he's a quack.)

Atkins is definitely therapeutic for me, I hadn't thought of it that way before. I have celiac disease, but it was undiagnosed back in 2003 when I first did Atkins. What a world of difference it was....on Atkins I felt good (especially digestively) for the first time I could remember. I realized a few years afterwards that it was because I wasn't eating any grains, among other things. Celiac is an autoimmune condition, so it's good I finally found out because if you keep eating gluten that will trigger more autoimmune conditions. I was having a lot of joint aches, for example. That goes away without grains.

I don't eat much dairy because I've had problems with dairy since birth, but right now I lean towards small amounts of cream cheese and sour cream, and the approx. 4T per day whipped half and half I put in my cappuccino each morning. I have never drunk milk and of course ice cream is disaster for me. So dairy in general I have a lot of problems with, but small amounts of the above I get away with, no issues at all.

As much as I truly love most vegetables, they generally wreak havoc on my system with bloating and gas, and sometimes more. So I'm always walking a fine line on my vegetable vs. meat input. Most meats don't bother me at all. What a conundrum! So in any case, this version of Atkins really suits me but I do feel that at a later point I have to work back into my diet more vegetables and some limited fruit.

I keep coming back to this, especially when people talk about how great a vegan diet is. It simply does not make sense that people who were doing hard physical labor (because there were no mechanical innovations that made it possible to avoid hard physical labor) were eating that sort of diet. Ever.

And even once we started storing food for the winter, it had to essentially be rationed over the entire winter and far enough into spring so that you wouldn't run out of grain, dried beans, dried fruit, and some root veggies or winter squash that kept well for months at a time. You NEEDED to make sure that stored food would last until there would be enough spring and summer foods to eat.

Even when the first spring foods could be gathered, think about how a big bag (or clam-shell container) of spinach cooks down to maybe a cup of greens - that won't go far if you're trying to feed a family of 4, much less a family of 8 or 12. So greens certainly couldn't have been a huge part of their diet even in spring or summer. It would take a bushel of raw greens to get a few cups of cooked greens. Not to mention the calorie value - a cup of cooked spinach only has 41 calories - how are you going to survive on that when doing the hard physical labor of doing absolutely everything by hand?

I have no doubt that a lot of people ate very little during the winter months to make sure the food lasted all winter, but for the most part they were eating lower carb foods: cheese and sausages or other smoked or salt-cured meats (the only way to safely store meats and dairy for several months back then), but also fresh milk and cream if they had a cow/ewe/goat doe that was still producing milk - which could be made into yogurt (or other fermented dairy), an egg if they had at least one precocious hen who still produced the occasional egg during the short days of winter, the occasional chicken from among those who were too old to produce eggs (and excess roosters since you only need one to maintain your flock), and fish, even if you needed to break through ice to catch the fish.

But the idea that they were all vegans, or lived primarily on plants way back when it absolutely preposterous, especially during the winter.