Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Surwit diet and derivatives (5) People and mice

George Henderson put up this link in comments to the last Surwit post

Small Amounts of Dietary Medium-Chain Fatty Acids Protect Against Insulin Resistance During Caloric Excess in Humans

It's a beauty. Following a standardised three day over feeding regimen, roughly one and three quarter times normal calorie intake, 82% of total calories as fat, you develop insulin resistance. Well, you do if the fat is predominantly saturated fat.

No one should be surprised at this. Sustained deliberate massive overfeeding has nothing to do with developing obesity in real life. Saturated fat makes adipocytes unwilling to accept this excess dietary fat so it is deposited anywhere the body can put it. The normal response to eating nearly twice your normal calories in a day is to eat less next day. But not if you are in an overfeeding study. So the unwillingness to store calories continues and the body's attempt to resist this (insulin resistance) continues.

If you do the same but replace just 30g of the 450g of saturated fat with MCTs (about 5% of total energy) you don't develop insulin resistance.

This is considered to be a Good Thing.

Personally, I think it's not. If you add some MCT oil to your saturated fat it is very clear that there is no resistance to the excess calories being put neatly and tidily in to storage. In to adipocytes. Which will expand. Which we call obesity. As in the obesogenic Surwit rodent diet...

The prediction from the Protons/ROS hypothesis is that under the Surwit diet that insulin sensitivity should be "improved" in the early stages due to the MCT lipids. That might actually show best if rodents were fed the Surwit diet but restricted in calories so the late onset obesity related insulin resistance doesn't obscure the underlying pathology.

I wonder, that's not difficult and might have been done... Time to hunt.



This was the first hit:

Fat, carbohydrate, and calories in the development of diabetes and obesity in the C57BL/6J mouse

by the original Surwits. Sadly Mr and Mrs Surwit didn't specify which high fat diet they used in this study. They cite two refs, one used coconut oil 

Differential effects of fat and sucrose on the development of obesity and diabetes in C57BL/6J and A/J mice

and one used "1850" by Bio-Serve.

Diet-Induced Type II Diabetes in C57BL/6J Mice

Modern Bio-Serve F1850 is a lard based high fat diet, so we'll never quite know which diet we are talking about in the restricted feeding regimen. However the question is the same: Do "high fat" diets work by sensitising adipocytes to over respond to insulin? Be that linoleic acid from lard or medium chain fatty acids from coconut oil.

This should show if you feed the obesogenic diet but restrict calories. Which is exactly what the Surwits did.

The high fat/restricted calories mice were not fed to be weight matched with the low fat mice, merely to be calorie matched. Of course, despite "calories in" being matched, the pair-fed high fat diet mice gained more weight than the low fat mice. I'm guessing they were a) very hungry and b) hypometabolic.

Here are the weights:























Blood glucose and insulin were measured at the times marked by the arrows. Glucose looks like this:























which is pretty boring and appears to reflect the relative body weights. Insulin comes out like this:























If we stick the hungry fat mouse values through an HOMA IR calculator (which gives silly numbers but allows a comparison) we get an HOMA score of 13.9 while for the control mice we get 16.2. The high fat fed partially starved mice are more insulin sensitive than the control mice. Given access to more food this insulin sensitivity would undoubtedly make them become fatter. And the fatness would eventually render them insulin resistant per se.

TLDR: The mice which are on a high fat diet but underfed are fatter than controls (despite equal calories) but have LOWER insulin and lower insulin resistance than controls. Surwit diets make you insulin sensitive and this makes you fat.

With thanks to George and the Surwits.

Peter

19 comments:

karl said...

It continues to amaze me how many people don't get that insulin resistance is a Good-Thing - absolutely needed if you don't want to get fat.

The other treatment - giving extra long term insulin for T2D is finally being questioned - but it is currently entrenched medical practice. But really if the relative levels in insulin sensitivity and insulin control the average flux of fats in and out of adipose tissue, it would seem that eating PUFAs would be similar to taking insulin - and will harm people's long term health.

I suspect that eating PUFAs or taking extra insulin will both cause over-storage - a pound a month - 12lb/year 120/lb in a decade.. If our bodies over-stores - it looks like we get enough extra hunger (or lethargy) to make up the difference.

The gap between the 'art' of health care and what the science shows seems to be getting larger.. Or am I just getting old?

Gyan said...

Is it possible that the obesogenic effect of MCTs while manifested in mice is somehow suppressed in humans?

Passthecream said...

"entrenched medical practice."

Aye there's the rub.

Captain Sunset said...

Hi Peter, Can I throw in a question to you and your readers? It's a bit off the wall, but as a grandad of seven with another on the way, I would be curious to hear of informed opinion on fats in respect of breastfeeding. I am the eldest of 5 siblings, and I have 4 kids. My (much) younger siblings never suffered from any form of colic, but it seems that today nearly every child (including my grandkids) suffer from reflux! All seem to have a need for various concoctions of infant Gaviscon. This cannot be right. My latest grandchild (male, now 3-months old) is no different. Like many good mothers, mum is very invested in his care, but reflux is a thing, and although very good-natured, and with little crying, he never seems to stop agitating. It's as if he's constantly 'swimming' (drowning?). Being LCHF has had many, many positives with my health, and as breastfeeding is basically keto, today's adult diet must be having some knock-on issues in this respect. In this case, mum is very slim and does have something of a decent diet, but it's also tough to independently grasp what is actually good for you today with the BS that gets pumped everyone's way.

Bob Niland said...


Captain Sunset: …colic, but it seems that today nearly every child (including my grandkids) suffer from reflux!
High on the suspect list is pandemic generational dysbiosis, including outright extinctions of key species/strains. This can be due to:
• Caesarian birth
• Lack of breast feeding
• Neither of the above, but mom had extinctions
• All was present, but got nuked by standard of infant care, or
• Junk infant "food" and usual modern settler hazards (too many to list)
Microbial species with supporting science for colic might include (not limited to) Bifidobacteria infantis, Lactobacillus reuteri ATCC 55730, DSM 17938, Lactobacillus plantarum, all available as probiotics.
Re-colonization may or may not be coming to a future near you.

karl said...

My experience is GERD is caused by a high carbohydrate diet - could be that the mother's BG might effect the sugar in the milk? MD's don't know about this connection ( I spoke to 4 back in the 1980's - not a one mentioned it .. ended up on PPIs that I think were a causative factor for getting CAD ) ..

These guys think this is something new - it is not..
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0929664617305910

I remember reading something - I think from the 1960's - that showed this..

Robin said...

This study was featured in Brad Marshall's latest blog post:

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/physzool.65.5.30158549

They take three groups of adult gold-mantled ground squirrels and feed them a low (coconut oil), medium (corn oil) and high (sunflower) LA diet respectively. They all gain similar amounts of weight and go up to around 45% body fat. I was wondering if you think your new idea regarding medium chain fats is sufficient to explain this phenomenon.

Robin

Passthecream said...

What was the rest of the diet that wasn't low grade fats?


I hope squrls are better at hibernating than these neanderthals were:


https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003552120300832

Outlaw said...

As an underweight person, this might be worth giving a shot. Dairy fat certainly isn't enough, even at 200gr. a day ... mad uncoupling.

Peter said...

Hi Robin

If you just work out the absolute amount of body fat you get 121g, 129g and 137g of total adipose tissue for the low, medium and high PUFA groups. If that’s not significant then just upping the group sizes would make it so. How you present your results is determined by what you want to show!

Peter

Jay said...

Hi Peter,
Off topic but have you heard about this report:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-said-probing-link-between-pfizer-shot-and-heart-problem-in-men-under-30/
Already...

altavista said...

Brain, mice, I immediately knew where this belongs
:)
https://psyarxiv.com/fa4wz/

Peter said...

Thanks Jay. I guess this is why we shouldn't abandon phase III trials at 2 months with only 40,000 people involved...

alta, Love it!

Peter

William Eden said...

Peter,

Unrelated, but I'm curious what you think of this idea?

https://fireinabottle.net/category/the-scd1-theory-of-obesity/

You may or may not already know, but he's a fan of the ROS theory of obesity too, but this has been some of his more recent posting...

Will

karl said...

Hmm... it seems that the tyrannical psych-opp has backfired., more than a few people no longer trust the message. Back in February, about 1/4 here planed to NOT get the vaccine - that has now increased to 30-40% in-spite of veiled threats. Perhaps the common Joe isn't as stupid as they think.

I saw a news stories that said YouTube took down 30,000 video-clips because of CoVid. Some of these clips were MD's simply quoting published papers.. but not all - yes there were some absolutely false clips as well(on both sides). But there has always been BS floating around - I think most grownups know to not trust everything they read or see on the Internet.

Is Fauci possibly dealing with a serious guilt induced phobia? Is he seriously cracked? When I saw him wearing 2-masks - insisting that it is not theater - I had to conclude he is likely showing signs of a serious phobia. He has always had conflicts of interests - pushing gain of function on viruses that can infect humans is insane - Nuremberg insane.

When I was a boy, I used to have to wait hours on end at the hospital for my father to see patients. He was an ObGyn and back then, the pregnancy test was done with lab rats. While waiting, I often visited the lab where the rats were. This is where I first got interested in microscopes and optics. But the rats were of interest as well. I was just a boy - too young to be there, and the lab rats were too much of a temptation. One time while looking at the rats, one somehow escaped! So the dear lab lady was down on her hands and knees with me, catching this rat.

I asked her if any ever got away - she said one did - never to be found. Which is OK - healthy rats like this just aren’t a huge problem.

Other lab creatures, bacteria, can be a hazard - but they use special lines that can’t survive out of a petri dish with special growth media. So they do gene experiments with these bacteria - but these bugs can’t live in people - they use lots of precautions, but this work ends up still being safe if someone gets exposed.

But the work that Fauci worked to bring to the world - helped move it to China after they said it was to dangerous to do here - is different. Gain of function work should never happen with viruses that have any possibility of infecting humans.

Viruses are quite unlike bacteria - the number of virion particles is staggering - using bubble suits and positive pressure containment sort of works - but the HEPA filters are a statistical intervention - even if with the special filters used in these labs, they can’t stop 100% - lots of procedures to prevent the spread - but we can’t stop every virus - it isn’t a question of ’if’ - it is a question of ’when’ they will spread one to humans. Doing gain of function work on human capable viruses is a crime against humanity.

So THE guy - The ’expert’ - if he was a good scientist, he would have understood this. (Great scientists rarely go into the political world - where truth is something sold and traded.)

I don't know what facts about the vaccines are honest - or cooked. I know a lot of money is trading hands and "money doesn't talk; it swears". I think the best option is to wait and see - but I don't know - I know voices have gone missing - which voices? If voices are missing, it seems best to wait - see what leaks through over time.

We are living in a 'tyranny of the experts' - the idea that any group of experts can considered ALL the possible outcomes - so they might protect the ignorant masses with some arrogant policy is simply wrong. The more people in the debate the better. Yes, some people will spout nonsense - some will fall for false-narratives, but if some unsophisticated farmer discovers a flaw in their logic and others can hear his voice , his voice can change the world.

The idea that the world should be ruled by an intellectual elite has been tried and tested before - with rather terrible results.

Kjetil said...

I have a querstion about this. Brad Marshall of FireInABottle is selling stearic-acid induced ghee with MCT-oil. I just got one in the mail today. If I understood this post correctly would you say that adding that MCT would be a bad idea if the purpose of consuming this was to loose weight? I guess he has to add some for it not to be hard as rock, but are there better options out there?

Gyan said...

@Kjetil,
This is a paradox. The Keto community recognizes MCT oil as helpful in losing weight but the mice studies suggest otherwise.

Captain Sunset said...

@ Karl, The new vaccines? It's a racket. I think all part of possibly the biggest scam ever. It makes Enron and the banking crisis look like child's play.

'Mouthwash kills coronavirus' - according to York researchers

https://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/19268535.mouthwash-kills-coronavirus---according-york-researchers/?ref=wa

Make it yourself! Follow my salt, sodium carbonate, and HP nose/throat cleaning protocol.

In a mug of warm water, dilute:

1 level tsp of sea salt

1/4 tsp of sodium carbonate/washing soda (1/2 tsp [to acceptance] if suffering from any upper airway infection)

1/8 tsp (...to acceptance) of 3% hydrogen peroxide (from the chemist, but I use 6% food grade)

Snort up mix the nose and gently expel 2/3 times. Job done. I've been doing this for 4-years after a very, very bad upper airway (Rhinitis) infection. It's truly the biz. It sorts everything. Sleep is bliss. Promise. Covid? Forget it. I do this routinely about 3-times a day. As they say, keep your nose clean and all will be dandy! I have also a new nebulizer, but since doing this protocol I have never had the need to use it. Interestingly, since UK lockdown in Nov/Dec I noticed (when wearing glasses) that I have had about 6 virus/nasal infections. How do I know? Well, looking in the bathroom mirror, at the base of my nose, it turns completely white, along with some very slight fizzing! Sometimes I have had some sniffles, but they only last a day or so. This is so easy and simple kids can do it. Never do this without salt.

Dr. Rob said...

The mRNA vaccines reduce “symptoms” of Covid because it downregulates M1 and is anti-inflammatory

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3922422/

This is why I have had patients with “long covid” say they feel better after the vaccine. However, this anti- inflammatory affect comes at the price of immunosuppression- hence the increase in infections.

You may have seen that we are now using inhaled steriods in the treatment of covid - it appears that the mechanism of action is connected to the inverse relationship between Vit D and miR-21.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31204163/

This is relevant because miR-21 plays a number of pivotal roles in immunometabolism and circadian biology and is involved in most disease conditions.

https://europepmc.org/article/PMC/PMC7953557

You might be particularly interested in it’s role in mitochondrial respiration and cellular lipid content!

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30657727/

As well as diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

Interestingly miR-21 is also connected to circadian control.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0176243

So, why is this relevant to the mRNA vaccine?

Because, it is highly likely miR-21 in involved!

https://crimsonpublishers.com/aics/pdf/AICS.000552.pdf

I suspect they do not realise the potential consequences of an up regulation in miR-21