Look at that bite. That's my catastrophic tooth organisation! That really is how my teeth developed as a youngster. Not much to be done about that nowadays...
On the baby front the carnivory continues:
And I've largely replaced creamy cocoa with chocolate butter:
One 100gm chocolate bar (85% or 90%), One 250gm block of economy butter, 45ml double cream, 15 or 30ml honey and some vanilla. Melt, pour in to an ice cube tray, freeze, pop out of tray while frozen, keep in fridge until consumed, not very long...
It partly settles out unless you are very careful with temperatures but tastes none the worse for that.
Reading wise it's still all mitochondria and there are a million things to check but it remains interesting in the extreme.
What with the children's birthdays, Solstice, Christmas etc there is not a lot of free time but I'll get some posts up sometime!
Happy mid Winter Festival time to all
Peter
Brings back memories of last year's Solstice, driving across the Acle marshes in to a brilliant dawn with a lunar eclipse in the rearview mirror. Lovely to live just above the adjoining marshes nowadays.
Lovely!
ReplyDeleteCan you give us a recipe for the (gluten free, lowish carb) ginger cake too?
Happy mid-winter Festival time to you and your lovely family too.
I could certainly make such lovely treats for myself...but nah, I'll just ask you to send them across the pond for me. ;-)
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to more mitochondria posts. Lots to explore on that front, which thankfully doesn't ever negate or exclude other theories/understanding of metabolism.
Peter:
ReplyDeleteThanks to your insightful posts and references to Nick Lane, I am now reading all of his books that I can get my hands on. Working my way through Oxygen. Lane is truly a gifted science writer and a provocative thinker.
Love the baby pictures! Please post more.
... add some vanilla flavoured whey protein powders (sweetened with stevia) if you need more proteins...
ReplyDeleteYummmmm!
p.s. - wish to know about the Ginger cake too (like Mary)
Marco
I can't help but wondering what all this fat does to your baby's cholesterol. I know what it does to mine, but do babies react in the same way? I guess they don't measure this at that age, or do they?
ReplyDelete(It's a serious question, I'm not arguing whether high cholesterol is bad or not)
lol dark chocolate + butter?... Pieter, i wish i had that luck! At that age my diet consisted of mostly: candies, coca cola, mind-blowing amounts of... pastries!
ReplyDelete( basically im eating dat shit in every single pic of mine) and if i was lucky, MAYBE : instant noodles, potatoes + soy Sausages...
im telling you that kind is lucky.
Umm, Pieter: breastmilk is *full* of fat and cholesterol. And compounds to *ensure* that the baby's body assimilates as much of the cholesterol as possible.
ReplyDeleteHas natural selection decided to play a cruel trick on said baby by trying to kill it before it's weaned, or do you think that maybe there's a benefit to that fat and cholesterol?
Pieter might be interested in this study: http://www.ibfanasia.org/Article/EJCN_Lipid_profile.pdf which compares infants who are exclusively breastfed vs. those who were mixed fed. Looks like the mixed fed babies have have lower cholesterol.
ReplyDeletePeter, I've been reading that new book Wheat Belly that Dr. Eades reviewed. Something struck me; on SAD, I had chronic allergies. On Atkins, I had no allergies, even after I ate Seitan, which is 100% gluten. (I stopped eating Seitan after I read a few of your post about gluten.). I think the takeaway from Davis' book is that there's more wrong with modern hybrid wheat than just the gluten.
ReplyDeleteLike I said, I'm not arguing whether fat and cholesterol is bad :-)
ReplyDelete(see my previous post http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2011/05/hepatic-insulin-resistance-in-kd-fed.html?showComment=1304505007225#c7814832099089630757)
I know breast milk has a lot of fat, and I'm all for breast feading babies. When I see what my friends feed to their babies I'm sometimes appalled ... all the things I'm trying to avoid.
Pablo, I have some vague memories about eating bacon and eggs as a little child. I used to put my bread in the pan afterwards to absorb all the fat.
But for some reason at a certain moment in time that went away, and was replaced with the usual crap. I think that must have been the start of the fat scare :-)
Vespabelle, thanks for the link to that study.
Peter, you wrote: "Reading wise it's still all mitochondria..." Have you looked at Dr Terry Wahls' book "Minding my mitochondria". Dr Wahls claims she reversed her serious multiple sclerosis by adopting what was a palaeo diet, constructed as the best way to nurture her mitochondria. She has a website as well as the book and summarised her position a couple of months ago in this TEDx video:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLjgBLwH3Wc
@Arby,
ReplyDeletethe carbs in wheat and other grains cause bacterial overgrowth and gut dysbiosis. A healthy gut flora is essential to a healthy immune system.
ALL grains are bad not just modern wheat.
Arby, the author of Wheat Belly has a serious misunderstanding about wheat. He thinks whole wheat is just as bad as refined wheat. In fact, the evidence suggests that abdominal obesity ('wheat belly') is caused primarily by copper deficiency. Look up 'fatty liver copper deficiency'. Fatty liver goes together with abdominal obesity.
ReplyDeleteDavis is a heart doctor, but he does not seem to be aware of the large literature implicating copper deficiency as a major cause of heart disease. I cannot find any mention of copper on his blog.
I think you are right about gluten. Gluten sensitivity is not the fault of the gluten but of a poorly functioning gut immune system. Gluten opens tight junctions in the gut, which is supposed to be very scary. But it has to do that to gain access to the gut immune system for generation of 'oral tolerance', without which all dietary proteins would be toxic.
Thanks for the recipe Peter. Can't wait to try it!
ReplyDeleteI, too, would love the recipe for the ginger cake you mention. Please, please, pretty please? Thank you much.
ReplyDelete@Jane,
ReplyDeletethe major problem with wheat is that it contains significant levels of fructans and indigestible carbohydrates which cause gut dysbiosis.
Meat proteins are totally non-allergenic. There is no documented case in the mainstream literature of a genuine allergy to red meat.
@blogblog
ReplyDelete'Meat proteins are totally non-allergenic. There is no documented case in the mainstream literature of a genuine allergy to red meat.'
Have a look at this.
'..Beef-specific..antibodies were determined..in a population of allergic patients (N=125) classified into patients with asthma, skin disease or gastrointestinal disorders, as well as in control subjects (N=80). IgE antibodies specific for citric fruits, tomato, cows milk, chickens egg and wheat were also determined. Beef was the predominant allergenic food in the whole population..All allergic patients..significantly ameliorated their symptoms, and their levels of beef-specific antibodies were considerably reduced in response to a cow meat exclusion diet..'
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20846474
Hi Peter,
ReplyDeletewhat does double cream mean in fat content?
also, on a similar chocolate+butter note - check out the recipe for truffles by M.D. Eades
http://www.proteinpower.com/drmd_blog/recipes/classic-truffles-the-perfect-valentines-treat/
@blogblog
ReplyDelete'..the major problem with wheat is that it contains significant levels of fructans and indigestible carbohydrates which cause gut dysbiosis.'
I don't know of any evidence that whole wheat causes gut dysbiosis. Are you thinking of experiments in which people who have been eating white flour all their lives are given purified wheat components?
@Zbig,
ReplyDeleteThe double-cream I usually buy is 47.5g/100g. I think it is what Americans call heavy cream.
@Blogblog,
Ray Peat has concerns over the tryptophan and cystein (and maybe other things) in meat, and suggests we shouldn't eat so much muscle meat, but concentrate on bony, fatty, gristly, gelatinous joints (and e.g. make bone broth out of them). I've been experimenting with middle neck of lamb, and got quite a lot of fat and gelatine out that way. I did eat the meat as well, of course. Oxtails are also good, but they seem to be as rare as hen's teeth at the moment.
@Peter,
Just did a trial batch of chocolate butter. Didn't have cream in, so used a bit of "Gold Top", Jersey/ Guernsey (unhomogenised) milk. (Interestingly, it seems to have a bit more protein than double-cream, at 3.7g rather than 1.7g per 100ml). Also, as this was a (supposedly...) "occasional" treat, I saw no reason not to use good Jersey butter ... :-) (But forgot the vanilla... :-( ).
Regards,
Mike
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete@montmorency
ReplyDeleteI simply can't take Ray Peat seriously as a nutrition expert.
If you read Peat's articles you will notice that they are full of old references from obscure journals. In general the use of references over five years old is strongly discouraged in the biological sciences because they are usually totally obsolete. Yet Peat frequently uses references that are decades old. In his 2009 MS article [http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/ms.shtm] all of the references were at least nine years old, most references were 10-30 years old and four of the references were over 30 years old. This strongly suggests that he is either unfamiliar with current literature or the current literature doesn't support his arguments.
@jane,
ReplyDeleteWholegrains are high in both soluble and insoluble fibre. Fibre causes increased growth of toxic putrefactive bacteria in the colon. The stools of vegetarians typically have an absolutely foul smell because of the presence of volatile putrefactive compounds.
Whole grains are arguably even unhealthier than refined grains. In Britain during WW2 there was a major resurgence of rickets due to the use of wholegrain flour. Finely ground chalk was then added to flour to counteract the phytates.
@blogblog
ReplyDeleteMy understanding on these points is the opposite of yours. Do you have references please?
@blogblog , Jane,
ReplyDeleteI'm enjoying your conversation, but the point that I was trying to make is that wheat=allergies, while low-carb with seitan/gluten does not. At least for my n=1, there is more inflamitory components in wheat than gluten.
I wonder if by gluten free, Peter, meant rice or soy flower. I've heard of allergies related to soy, but not enough to end my whey and soy protein drink mix. I haven't heard anything about rice allergies.
@Jane
Copper deficiency should be rare due to the prevelence of copper pipe in household plumbing, right? But SAD depletes everything, so I wouldn't be surprised to see it crop up even with copper in water. What did you thing of the authors blood PH chapter? That almost got me to eat my veggies! Almost. :)
Looking at the images of butter slathered ginger cake and chocolate butter, I can't help giggle thinking of the low reward crowd eating their bland, tasteless food to try to lose weight. :-)
ReplyDelete@bloglog
ReplyDeleteThe outbreak of rickets in the UK was very small, limited to small area's (Northamptonshire in particular) and due to poor Vitamin D. British health improved during the rationing, white bread consumption was much reduced.
@WeydonBarnes,
ReplyDeleteI was taught by biochemist Dr FEG Harrap, who was a leading British phytate researcher in the 1940s. He discussed this topic during one of our food science lectures. He said the rickets problem in WW2 was due to the excessive use of bran (not vitamin D deficiency per se) in the UK bread ration during WW2. It was was solved by the mandatory addition of calcium in the form of ground chalk to counteract the phytates.
The health improvements in Britain during WW2 could just as easily be explained by calorie restriction, reduced alcohol consumption or increased physical activity amongst a multitude of other factors. Doing post facto epidemiology is not sound science.
@Jane,
ReplyDeleteeven the most cursory reading of the paleo literature will tell you how unhealthy wholegrains are.
Plants deliberately fill their seeds with a wide variety of toxins and anti-nutrients to prevent predation. The only mammals that can safely eat grains are rats, mice and other granivores. Even obligate herbivores such as horses and cattle suffer severe health problems from consuming grain (obesity, bloating, constipation and and chronic inflammation). In the wild grazing animals always prefer fresh grass and avoid seeds wherever possible.
No high quality clinical trial has ever shown measurable health benefits from the consumption of dietary fibre.
High amounts of insoluble (bran) fibre block the absorption of divalent metals including magnesium and calcium, increase the growth of pathogenic and putrefactive bacteria and cause bowel impaction.
Peter (and others),
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think about the following study
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7743394
Stan
Stan,
ReplyDeleteMust be the fructose.
Philip Thackray
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteSeveral notes:
ReplyDelete* Lots of copper in Cocoa
* High fat seems to be a factor for folks with Apo e4/e4 which is confusing the picture for normal people.
* I've not seen where anyone has shown that LDL is bad - only when accompanied with oxLDL. We did not evolve LDL so we would get heart disease - I think it is really part of the innate immune system (also HDL) (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innate_immune_system and http://www.nature.com/icb/journal/v88/n3/full/icb2009112a.html )
I have been tested for my Apoe status and because I'm not e4/e4 I don't worry about fat intake.
I do have some concern about oxChol intake and BG which I don't think there is any doubt are factors in CAD.
That oxChol comes with refrigerated meats may be an issue - wish there was better research so I could know for sure -- but oxChol could easily be the confounding issue in studies that claim fats are bad for us.
Why the medical community keeps testing for LDL levels instead of oxLDL or interleukins is due to political factors rather than the science.
CAD appears to me to not be a disease of fat consumption, but rather a immunological disease that is not well understood.
Is the increase in CAD due to not enough intestinal parasites? Refrigerated meats? Intestinal flora? We are not likely to find out until we break out of the obsession with LDL. We need to understand why some of our immune systems attack our arteries while sparing others.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI like your blog. I was wondering what you liked about the contents of dark chocolate that you make it part of your daily consumption? I looked in the tags for chocolate and cocoa but didn't see anything.
Thanks,
Dave
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteStan,
ReplyDeleteI subscribe to that journal, so if you don't have the full text yet want it, I can send it to you.
@blogblog:
ReplyDeleteYou criticise Peat for using old references, and yet in a reply to someone else, quote proudly being tought by some expert from the 1940s :-)
Gary Taubes has also been criticised for using old references, and yet many people (including Peter, and, dare I say it, myself) take him fairly seriously.
Many people cite William Banting, not exactly a new kid on the block.
I don't think there is actually any problem in citing old references if you are doing it for good reasons, e.g. showing how knowledge evolved and developed, or e.g. for showing how knowledge was acquired, but then sadly ignored and forgotten. Both Peat and Taubes show how this occurred.
Anyway, the particular point I happened to cite about Peat, about eating from the whole animal rather than just the muscle meat, is hardly controversial. Clearly "primitive" people have always done this. And lots of people recommend bone broths.
However, you are not the only person to have their doubts about Peat. He ploughs a fairly lonely furrow, although that in itself does not make him wrong. By the way, you might have been looking at his older articles. I just looked at the first of his newer articles (dated 2009) and all the references are from 2004 or later.
I think he only puts his articles on the web when they are a few years old. His more recent ones will only be found in his newsletter, for which he charges the princely sum of USD 28 per annum, within the USA. The guy is entitled to try to make a living. He's not funded by the drug companies or the food industry, unlike most researchers.
Regards,
Mike
@Stan:
ReplyDeleteDo you mean this bit?
"
Mean life span of calorie-restricted sucrose-fed rats was significantly greater than that of all other groups (890 +/- 18 days)
Which suggests to me that if my body works like that of a rat, then I should get most of my carb calories (not many) from selected fruit or fresh (home-squeezed) fruit-juices (since I don't want to use refined sucrose, and most fruit have a similar ratio of glucose/fructose to sucrose, and I'll get some minerals and vitamins from fresh fruit/juice). Which is more or less what I am doing at the moment. Dr Lustig would approve of the fruit I think, but not the juice, though I'm hardly mainlining the stuff, and it's slowly made by me, not made in bulk by the Coca-Cola corporation.
montmorency,
ReplyDelete...not necessarily. The mean lifespan of fructose rats was higher with calorie restriction, not ad libitum. Also, the max and highest 10% lifepsan was with starch, not fructose. The calorie restricted fructose rats had better survival just during their youth and middle-age.
I don't see the problem in using "old" studies. They tend to have a more inquisitive tone, which I like, and supply better details. If it's not well-accepted in journalism, then okay, but then that's just a stupid norm.
@Montmorency,
ReplyDeletethere is no problem quoting old research for background purposes. However it should be only be a minor component of a bibliography not the bulk of the references.
I wasn't quoting research from the 1940s. I simply mentioned that a researcher with a first hand knowledge of WW2 era rickets blamed phytates rather than a lack of vitamin D.
Banting wasn't a researcher. He merely published a pamphlet detailing his anecdotal experiences on a low carbohydrate diet.
The general public incorrectly assumes that a PhD or MD qualification makes a person an expert in nutrition or exercise. In reality most of the so-called "diet doctors" are little more than ignorant self-promoting charlatans.
@Karl,
ReplyDeletea lack of gut parasites seems to be a huge problem.
I haven't seen any convincing evidence that dietary oxidised cholesterol is harmful to humans. The problem seems to be de novo formation due to high carbohydrate diets.
Peter,
ReplyDeleteMy mom and sister just made me chocolate butter for my birthday...A+
"No high quality clinical trial has ever shown measurable health benefits from the consumption of dietary fibre."
ReplyDeleteI don't find that statement to be meaningful. It is exactly the sort of phraseology--especially throwing in the "high-quality" caluse, which allows for cherry-picking--that the establishment nutritional community uses to reject concepts such as paleo eating.
Increased intake of soluble fiber certainly increases production and uptake of short-chain fatty acids, which are generally held to be beneficial.
As to "putrefaction" in the gut and the "foul smell" of the feces of vegetarians, those are exactly the same sorts of unsubstantiated statements I hear from naturopaths about meat eaters. I don't take that sort of thing seriously.
@Blogblog,
ReplyDeleteI suspect we are not going to agree on the aforementioned subjects, so let us politely agree to disagree and move on.
I've now had chance to do a search on this blog and hits on RP's surname, and I see there was a bit on an unhappy history here with one particular RP supporter. I have no wish to come across like him, so I will not bring up the name again.
Let me wish you, Peter and all we happy band of blog commenters a Happy New Year for 2012.
I raise a glass of sweet sherry (sorry, it's the best I can do at the moment) - Cheers!
@David,
ReplyDeleteThat paragraph about soluble fibre sounds interesting.
Can you give some examples of foodstuffs which would provide such soluble fibre?
On the subject of "foul smell", I certainly used to get a lot of wind on my old mixed diet (prior to going low-carb). On low-carb this hardly ever occurred. However, I cut out all grain products, most fruit, and ate only very sparingly of vegetables, so it is hard to say which of those might have been responsible.
Certainly meat and fat alone do not give me wind.
I recently re-introduced milk (pasteurised, but unhomogenised) to my diet, and started getting wind. However, I thought I was having too much (too many calories for one thing) so I cut back, and it disappeared, but it could also have been that I had got used to lactose again. I'm coming round to the idea that lactose (like fructose) isn't quite the villain that it's been painted in recent years (but like everything, all good things in moderation).
At the risk of giving TMI, you, and my family, will be pleased to note that I am almost 100% wind-free at the moment ...
@John,
ReplyDeleteI'm just a layman, and I find their wording less than clear in some respects, but surely this sentence:
"Mean life span of calorie-restricted sucrose-fed rats was significantly greater than that of all other groups (890 +/- 18 days)."
...is unambiguous?
i.e. rats on average live longer when fed on sucrose-based diets as opposed to cornstarch diets, but only if they are also calorie-restricted.
On the other hand, on an ad-libitum diet, then cornstarch-fed rats lived longer (720 +/- 23 days). (but not as long as the calorie-restricted, sucrose-fed rats (which lived for 890 +/- 18 days).
Ad-libitum-cornstarch-fed rats lived for 726 days, which is obviously not as long as 890 days.
If I am reading this correctly. If not, where is the error?
Are you going by something in the full-text (which I don't have) or perhaps this sentence:
These animals did, however, have the greatest upper 10th percentile survival of all four experimental groups.
(which refers to Calorie-restricted starch-fed rats)?
I'm not actually sure what that sentence implies.
Is it saying that a small number of the Calorie-restricted starch-fed rats lived longest of all? (How many days?) And that the 890 days is referring to the mean survival of the population (of calorie-restricted-sucrose-fed-rats) as a whole?
Hi all,
ReplyDeleteThe ginger cake recipe is up on the next post.
STG, I got Oxygen for Christmas. I only got to page 33 by New Year! It's interesting, I'm busy!
Hiya Marco. A lot of carbs and sucrose in there for anyone with digestive issues...
Pieter, dunno but my wife eats very similarly to myself and has a TC low enough to make a cardiologist wet her knickers for (ref an early episode of The Likely Lads). For me it's over 8mmol/l.
vespabelle, hmmm. I can see why the cardiologists are so keen to statinate children! OMG, TCs over 200!!!!!!!
Arby, blogblog, Jane
Oral tolerance is undoubtedly real but I'm loathe to trust my life to it. Where you look at the accounts of excavations of middle to lower class ancient Egyptians you see that ankylosing spondylitis was very common. Males and females, not just labourers. On what I'm assuming would be un-engineered Emer, totally organic, crudely milled, mineral rich. There does appear to be something special about wheat. As far as I am aware there is no equivalent tight junction opening effect with rice. With wheat you are playing Russian Roulette. You have to ask how many people would have maintained their beef antibody levels on a beef inclusive but wheat free diet....
Zbig, I too have far better recipes for truffle. This simple one came from the need for something very easy and cheap, to replace creamy cocoa in bulk. It was a combination of low cost and throw-it-together-without-weighing that was needed...
Myrmecia, I've not read the book or listened to the video, but MS does appear to be one of the more responsive diseases to LC eating. I don't know whether she included gluten elimination but Ted Hutchinson has recently sent me a discussion paper floating the idea of MS as a facet of metabolic syndrome. The paper is slow reading and miles out in many aspects but the core idea may be solid. This may tie in to Arby's lack of allergies as an effect of side stepping metabolic syndrome by LC eating. I have a feeling De Whal ultimately went paleo to get remission???? If so, wheat free...
Dave, I like saturated fat, preferably long chain saturated fat. Stearic acid is good. I like to keep sugar low but see no need to hit zero. There's only a smidge of sucrose in 90% cocoa chocolate. I hate antioxidants but am willing to trust my liver to excrete them asap. So I will still eat chocolate's antioxidants as I can stick a bar of solid stearic acid in my pocket as I head out of the door for a long day at work...
john, good. My New Year batch didn't separate out and is particularly good....
montmorency, the classic multiple intervention scenario. It hit me very early on that when we LC eat we change LOTS of variables. Lots and lots......... Especially if we markedly reduce PUFA too.... and eliminate most grains.
karl, there are lots of unknowns, I agree. Personally I have no worries with oxysterols in the diet. Modern HGs do, if an unmentionable source is accurate, cook on occasions by dropping meat on to hot embers. Lots of oxidised lipids in roast lamb... Human fire use possibly goes back 3 million years, I would guess for cooking. And oxLDL is, or is carried in, Lp(a), as far as I can see. It's important to humans, otherwise we would excrete all oxLDL in the way non-Lp(a) producing mammals do.... It's all very un-straightforward!
The baby awakes. Happy New year all.
Peter
Peter, do you have a reference to ancient Egyptians of the lower classes having ankylosing spondylitis? All I can find is a paper by Harris & Weeks who studied 40 mummies and found none. Mummies of pharoahs did have it, and apparently the upper classes ate white flour.
ReplyDeleteI eat a lot of (whole) wheat myself, and my joints and spine are in very good nick. I am always the only person in Oxford lecture theatres and libraries who sits up straight.
I make a treat with coconut butter (not oil), with a few walnuts or macadamias, some Irish Kerrygold butter all mixed together amd chilled. As long as half the batch is coconut butter, the other amounts are whatever suites me at the moment. A few drops of vanilla or other extracts add depth. This is a healthy, handy, and very satisfying snack.
ReplyDeleteI saw your comment about your bite and thought you may be interested that bite issues are still fixable even as an adult. I used to have a V shaped upper jaw, which didn't leave enough room for all the teeth on the LHS but over the last year I've had dental appliance fitted that has caused my jaw to change shape and now the teeth are moving apart and straightening on their own.
ReplyDeleteAs my father, sister and I all have the same upper jaw shape I wonder about the role of epigenetics.
Some before and after pics for dental appliances ALFs:
http://www.drfarid.com/alf.html
Preparing this comment I came across a blog with lots of comments about adult palette expansion:
http://ryan-koch.blogspot.com/2010/03/adult-palate-expansion.html
Jane,
ReplyDeletehttp://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/data/2001/11/01/html/ft_20011101.5.fulltext.html
I never chased any scientific follow on. I doubt they were on white flour but you never know. I personally eat no gluten so carry zero risk of failure of oral tolerance. Why bother, what is the drive to eat wheat????
Rod, thanks for the info but I've made it this far and don't much care what my bite is like except as a marker of a misspent youth. Maybe 40 years ago... Ditto fixing the massively damaged nose with deviated nasal septum. I had thought it was traumatic (several potential events) but I've seen similar noses on (possibly???) WAP website. Processed foods...
Peter
Jane,
ReplyDeleteNeither Lehner, Roth nor El-Din appear to publish on pubmed. Hawass has three publications but only on the upper echelons of society. But from the El-Din interview:
Quote: But even the Egyptians faced disease, old age, and death, and for the laborers life was surely hard.
"We can see that in their skeletons," says Azza Mohamed Sarry El-Din, a physical anthropologist who is studying the skeletal remains from the cemetery. "I've looked at 175 skeletons so far, about half men, half women, and nearly all of them suffered from arthritis. Their lumbar vertebrae are badly compressed, as you would expect for a manual workforce. I expected to see that—but I was surprised to see this kind of arthritis in the women too." She lays out the neck and lumbar vertebrae of one woman who died in her early 30s and points to the roughened, eroded edges of the bones. "She must have been carrying heavy loads on her head from the time she was a young girl to get this kind of damage," says Sarry El-Din.
Although there are no records or carvings showing women pushing stones or pulling statues on sleds (as there are of men doing this kind of labor), the condition of the women's bones suggests to her that they were. "There is more damage to their bones than you would expect from simply doing household chores"—or from supporting weight on their heads. Unquote
These people had ankylosing spondylitis. It was rife. The quaint concept of arthritis as wear and tear does not fit with how I see the world...
Peter
Thanks Peter. The article continues:
ReplyDelete'Some of the skeletons also suggest that the workers, despite the hard nature of their occupations, were well treated, although they may not have had the best diet—Sarry El-Din's initial analysis suggests that some individuals were anemic and that most of the laborers ate very little meat. (Curiously, Lehner's team has excavated great quantities of bones from butchered cattle, sheep, and goats—more than enough, he says, to feed several thousand workers some meat each day. Were the slaughtered animals intended only as offerings for the temple cults? The discrepancy between bones, diet, and quantities of meat remains a mystery.)'
Was the problem too much meat, not too little? Arthritis nowadays is associated with iron overload.
We have to somehow account for the remarkable health of the wheat-eating populations of northern India as studied by McCarrison 100 years ago.
'..The practice of sieving out the bran from flour dates from quite early times. For example, apart from much earlier evidence from Egypt [ref], white flour was being produced in Greece at least as early as 500 BC..'
ReplyDeleteThe Saccharine Disease, Chapter 5
Hi Peter,
ReplyDeleteYou don't seem to be too particular about usuing "grass fed" butter. What is your opinion about using only fat sources from grass fed animals? Also, do you have any thoughts on the safety of homogenization and pasturization of milk? This seem to be consdered a no no by many people in the nutritional blog sphere. I'm just wondering because I have no access to raw milk, (and all milk in Canada is homogenized, except skim, of course) and limited access to grass fed meat/dairy. Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
>thanks for the info but I've made it this far and don't much care what my bite is like except as a marker of a misspent youth.
ReplyDeleteI didn't worry about the cosmetic aspects but the functional ones caused me to investigate it: I was getting discomfort as the lower jaw was twisted to mesh with the upper teeth. Also, recently I changing to barefoot running, which reduced aches and pains but I was still getting asymmetric problems with my feet. This was traced back to my lower jaw position, which was causing the head to tilt (slightly) to one side and causing my shoulders and hips to be misaligned resulting in the foot problems.
@Rod Williams,
ReplyDeleteI've been following up your links. This is the most astonishing thing I've seen for a long time. Thanks.