Personal update 2019

Okay, personal update time.

Back in the middle of May this year Paul emailed me to let me know that Dr Kwasniewski had died at the age of 82. The possibility of his having had bowel cancer several years ago is apparently nearly impossible to follow up on but it doesn't appear to have been directly related to his passing away. I'd been meaning to post on this but never quite got round to it until Marco also emailed me with the same news last week. The Optimal Diet (OD) has served me well for about 17 years or so.

May was an interesting time for me. For a set of reasons not at all related to my own health I had been tempted to try the scenario of a paleolithic ketogenic diet, much along the lines of the Paleomedicina PKD protocol. I was basically interested in the level of practicality involved before suggesting it to a friend with a "modern-ketosis" resistant neurological problem. The practicalities eventually proved too problematic so the PKD option was never taken up.

I personally never expected that the PKD would change much for me.

I was wrong.

First, I stopped snoring. As far as I am aware, completely. Within a few days. I have a severely deformed nasal septum, probably traumatic in origin (if playing "toss the caber" as a kid with a larch pole, don't throw it straight up in the air in case it comes vertically back downwards directly on to your nose. Ouch). Both nostrils are severely narrowed. I never expected to ever stop snoring.

Second, the low back pain from which I got enormous relief with the OD, went. I've had three minor positional back injuries in five months but each resolution has been incredibly rapid with minimal analgesic needs.

My minor dry skin problems went within a few days, though this coincided with onset of decent access to sunlight in May, the Spring had been cool here in the UK.

Oh, and I dropped from 66kg to 62kg in a month, 11-12% body fat to 9%, estimated by lower body impedance on a set of Tanita home scales.

I carried on with the PKD.

So now I am stuck.

I really enjoy not being awakened by my wife to get me to roll back to sleeping on my side again, sometimes several times a night. I like having no back pain. I like the continued muscle strength development at the bouldering wall.

On the downside it is very socially uncomfortable. It has really brought home to me how utterly easy standard modern ketogenic eating really is. A bit of cooking and a few sweeteners and there is almost nothing you can't have within the diet.

Over the months on PKD I've added in very occasional cheese and a very, very occasional glass of Proseco on a Friday night, without apparent problems. Adding cauliflower or broccoli triggered low back soreness (I have to wonder if this is a nocebo effect, not exactly double blind!).

So nowadays I'm thinking about protein, GH, IGF-1 and insulin. I've always been cautious about protein levels but there are features about higher protein within a solidly ketogenic background that limits IGF-1 generation per unit GH secretion.

There are a number of posts there.

Currently I am, somewhat reluctantly, almost completely plant free. I'm no guru on this way of eating any more than on anything else, plus I'm very late to the party!

Peter