Grass-Fed Cows Create Soil and Reverse Climate Change
How cows, just by eating grass, sequester carbon out of the atmosphere and put it back into the ground where it belongs.
We often hear about the methane emissions from cows’ burping and farting, but we rarely hear about the contributions that grazing cows can make to reversing climate change. If raised correctly, cows can pull more than 10 times the climate change-causing gases out of the atmosphere that they add to it. Cows can be not only carbon-neutral, but carbon-negative.
Current farming practices involve factory farming of most of our meat, but this is a very different scenario than how cows and other ruminant (grazing) animals acted in the wild. For millennia, ruminant animals covered the grasslands of North and South America. Because of predators, they would stay in tight, bunched groups, and constantly were on the move for new sources of tall grass to eat. Their hooves would press the chewed grass into the soil, planting the seeds, and their waste would fertilize the plants. They would naturally move on when the majority of the tall grass was eaten, leaving short grass behind. They would not stay long enough to kill the grass but only to leave stubble, similar to when we mow our lawn. If we never mow the lawn, the grass becomes too tall and dries out from an excess of plant matter blocking sunlight and using up the water in the soil. If we mow our lawn too short, the grass can die as well. Both situations result in desertification, which is a fancy word for the removal of topsoil.
Soil is made out of carbon, because it is largely decomposed plant and animal matter. When this soil is sent up into the atmosphere, it become atmospheric carbon and contributes to climate change through an increase in global temperatures caused by the carbon trapping heat in the atmosphere. Both removing grazing animals from grasslands, and over-grazing the grasslands, causes desertification. But, mimicking nature with managed grazing actually does the opposite, and causes the grass to pour carbon into the ground - creating new topsoil and reversing climate change.
Grass has a symbiotic relationship with the fungus that lives underground. This means that they trade with each other. Fungus provides the grass with micronutrients, and in exchange grass provides the fungus with sugar, a 6-carbon molecule. Basically, the grass is purchasing nutrients from the underground fungus, and the currency is carbon. The grass obtains this carbon from the atmosphere, using sunlight as the energy source to drive photosynthesis (the creation of sugar). When the grass is eaten down by the cows but not killed, it causes the grass to pour carbon into the ground in order to “purchase” additional nutrients from the fungus to re-grow.
Allan Savory, the scientist who discovered much of this process and how to recreate it with farming practices, claims that grazing animals can create as much as a foot of topsoil a year, underground. The topsoil is created down into the earth, the level part of the ground does not change. Dead sandy areas underground become “humus”, or pure carbon, living topsoil. A teaspoon of healthy topsoil contains billions of organisms, mostly bacteria and fungus, as well as worms and grubs and much more.
Current farming practices, especially of grain and bean crops like the corn and soybeans that covers the U.S., cause desertification, the removal of topsoil, sending the soil carbon into the air. Some scientists believe that the removal of topsoil has contributed more to atmospheric carbon, and climate change, than all fossil fuels use COMBINED. But all we hear about is fossil fuels, no one is talking about soil. When the ground is tilled, broken up, during modern agriculture, it breaks up and kills the underground fungus and ruins the symbiotic relationship between the plants and the fungus underground. The plants are no longer able to “purchase” nutrients from the fungus, which is now dead from being tilled, and the farmer is forced to use artificial nutrients (fertilizers) to feed the plants. Also, the actual tilling of the ground sends more soil carbon up into the air. Then the modern farmer also kills pests and weeds with pesticides and herbicides, further killing the bacteria and fungus underground, creating dead soil that no longer is able to absorb water or support life without artificial nutrients.
When Europeans arrived at the Americas in 1492, there was an average of 10 feet of topsoil covering the continents, created by millennia of ruminant animals grazing the grasslands. Now we are down to an average of 6 inches. Scientists state that we have less than 60 harvests left before all the soil is gone and plants will no longer grow. We need to stand up to the monolithic farming conglomerates that have taken over the small farms that used to cover our land, and are mass-producing corn and soybeans in order to feed not only factory-farmed animals, but humans as well. Humans are not meant to eat grains and beans, and neither are ruminant animals.
Allan Savory states that if we cover the earth’s existing grasslands in grazing animals, we could create enough topsoil (by pulling carbon out of the atmosphere) to completely reverse climate change. Cows can save the planet.
Learn more:
Allan Savory's TED Talk (One of the Top 100 TED talks of all time)
Cayenne Gargle: A Natural Cure for Strep Throat
Cayenne and salt together kill as much strep bacteria as antibiotics, and are much gentler on the gut and immune system.
Scientific studies have shown that there are many natural medicines that are just as effective as antibiotics against strep throat (Group A Streptococci). The most effective natural medicine against strep throat that I’ve found is cayenne pepper (active component: capsaicin). Two others that have shown promise in studies are oil of thyme or oregano (active compound is carvacrol), and cinnamon oil (Cinnamomum verum EO) - which was found in a study of essential oils to be the most effective essential oil, similar to a common antibiotic (Amoxicillin) in its antimicrobial activity against strep.
My favorite home cure for strep throat, that has worked over 20 times in a row in my family for over a decade, is to make a salt water-cayenne gargle and use it many times throughout the day as soon as one’s throat becomes sore. I use 1/2 teaspoon of sea salt and 1-2 teaspoons of cayenne powder (as much as I can stand) in one cup of warm water, using one medium sip for each gargle. Spit the gargle out after. It’s important to start right away, and to keep the spicy residue on the throat and not drink water right after. Basically every time I eat or drink, I do another gargle of the salt-water cayenne, and I can feel the cayenne killing the bacteria on my throat. I do rinse my mouth out with plain water after the gargle, if the cayenne makes my mouth too spicy, but I leave the spicy salt/cayenne rinse on my throat.
Usually the pain is reducing by the end of the first or second day, if I am strict about keeping the spicy on my throat. The salt is helpful by creating an osmosis effect on the cells of the throat, drawing the bacteria to the surface so they can be killed by the cayenne, and rinsed out of the mouth. We also make sure to not eat any grains or sugars, so that we don’t feed the throat bacteria simple carbohydrates, eating mostly healthy animal fats and proteins, as well as fruits and honey for carbohydrates if needed.
People have also had success with the cayenne technique with young children by using Cholula mild hot sauce, which contains capsaicin, the active compound in cayenne pepper, and isn’t quite as spicy. It can be added to their food, like scrambled eggs, with a little sea salt, and eaten periodically throughout the day. Be sure to visit a doctor if a child’s sore throat doesn’t improve within a day or two.
References:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4643145/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22807321
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25784902/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3638616/
Insulin Resistance
Carbohydrates raise blood sugar and release insulin, and this leads to obesity and blood sugar-related chronic disease.
Why are so many of us overweight, and what links does obesity have to diabetes and other major disease of our time, like heart disease and cancer? Even the "experts" agree that these diseases are all linked - its called the "Metabolic Syndrome," and that insulin plays a major role.
The part that is unclear to most nutritionist and doctors is the cause and effect. Most health care professionals believe that obesity is caused by simply eating too many calories and that its the obesity itself that causes insulin problems in the body. I believe they have it backwards.
Insulin is a hormone in the body that plays many roles. Its primary job is to enable us to use glucose as fuel for our cells. It is, in fact, the only hormone that causes fat to be stored. We have insulin receptors on our cells - all cells. Heart, liver, adipose (fat), muscle, and brain all have insulin receptors that sense the presence of glucose in our blood stream, and allow the addition of GLUT4 receptors on the cell membrane to uptake the glucose into our cells.
When the body is overwhelmed by the presence of carbohydrate, the insulin receptors begin to stop being as productive. They become resistance to the presence of glucose. (Fructose as well, which is a major cause of the problem, and I'll get to that in a little bit.) Sometimes the receptors work properly, but they are unable to signal the introduction of the GLUT4 receptors that actually absorb the glucose into the cell. Either way, the body responds by releasing additional insulin from the "islets of Langerhans" cells in the pancreas. This additional release of insulin has tragic consequences.
Frequently, the first cells to become resistance to insulin, and thus become unable to use the glucose as fuel, are the muscle cells. Usually adipose tissue is less insulin resistant. So the body responds to this additional insulin by dumping fat and protein into the fat cells. See, its not even the glucose that gets stored. Many in the field of nutrition talk about glucose as being the "preferred fuel" but that doesn't make sense, as glucose is simply empty calories. The body is poisoned by the glucose because it raised blood sugar levels, which have to be kept within strict limits - between 4-6 mM. Because the body wants to be rid of the glucose, it stores the fat and protein in the blood stream for energy use after the glucose is burned off. And any excess glucose is stored as well.
Fructose is even more poisonous to the body. It only exists in the wild in very small amounts in fruit. Most fruit grows in the summer, or in tropical climates, when there is ample sunlight available to also produce large amount of vitamin D in the body. Vitamin D plays a big role in the digestions of carbohydrates and the release of insulin, although this relationship is not well understood. Fructose is digested exclusively by the liver, and has to be packaged into very-low-density-lipoproteins (VLDLs) to be carried through the blood stream. These VLDLs have strong links to heart disease. Also, the fructose often get stored in the liver, and has strong links to fatty liver and liver cirrhosis, also known as "non-alcoholic fatty liver disease." Fructose makes up half of the sugar molecule, as well as about half of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), and has never been present in the human diet in the amounts seen today. Mainly this consumption comes from soda (which I call the "cigarette of the future"). There is a growing body of evidence that the fructose itself is what causes the insulin resistance in the first place, and creates the situation where the body can't effectively digest glucose.
So how do we improve our insulin sensitivity, especially in the muscle cells? How do we get our bodies to begin to use the glucose in our blood streams as fuel, rather than storing it as fat, along with the dietary fat and protein? How do we lose weight?
There are a number of things we can do. The first and most obvious, which I have written about extensively, is to cut our carbohydrates, especially sugar and other forms of fructose like HFCS and excessive fruit. A little fruit is not the problem, but it's also not the health food it's made out to be. It's meant to be eaten in the fall at harvest time, in order to store fat for winter, or eaten in tropical climates with 8 hours a day of sunlight on the skin.
In addition to vitamin D (which is needed in much larger amounts in places like Minnesota -I take 10,000 IUs a day), the other less obvious solutions include supplements of magnesium and fish oil. The long chain fatty acids in fish oil improve our cell membrane structure, and allow the body to heal from insulin resistance.
And most importantly, we can engage in a type of exercise called "interval training". This includes small periods of high heartrate-inducing exercise, followed by periods of rest. Usually about 60 seconds on, and then 75 seconds off. This is more effective than long periods of cardio, which is suspected to be hard on the heart and nervous system. It's not so much the "calories" burned by the exercise, as it is the increased insulin receptors that the exercise creates on the muscle cells. When we have additional insulin receptors on our muscle cells, our body is able to use the (small) amount of glucose that we consume as fuel, rather than only storing it and the food we eat with it, as fat.
This not only enables us to continue to safely eat a little carbohydrate, but it helps us lose weight and improves our resistance against metabolic diseases, which are the number one killer in our society!
Buffins! (Bacon Muffins)
Delicious morsels of egg, bacon, and cheese. Who said a keto-carnivore breakfast can’t be quick and easy?
These are delicious and have virtually no carbs. The coconut flour can be omitted for those with fiber-intolerance like SIBO and they still turn out well, although more egg-y. You can also omit the baking powder for a strict carnivore muffin. These go like hotcakes at my house, I suggest at least a double batch and freeze the extras, if there are any! The can easily be brought to room temp from frozen, or quickly warmed up in the microwave for 30 seconds. Enjoy!
Ingredients:
12 pastured eggs
4 Tbs butter
1/4 C coconut flour
1 tsp baking powder
16 strips nitrate-free bacon, chopped now or crumbed after cooking, fat pressed out with paper towels while warm
1/2 cup cheddar cheese
Butter (for greasing your muffin tin)
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Fry chopped bacon in a skillet until crispy. Set aside.
3. Mix eggs and butter in a mixing bowl.
4. Add coconut flour and baking powder, mix.
5. Stir bacon and cheese into batter.
6. Either grease your muffin tin with butter or line with silicone baking cups.
7. Pour batter into muffin tin and bake for 15 minutes. Can be frozen for up to 6 months! Pop in the microwave for 30 seconds and go!
Letter To My Daughter's Teacher
What I said when my daughter was exposed to vegan propaganda at school.
Just ate a huge steak covered in butter while I wrote this letter to my daughter's teacher.
Hey *,
I just wanted to drop a note to you about the earth day lesson that you gave the kids yesterday. My daughter was concerned and I would love to pass on some scientific information to you that you might not be aware of and might be interested in.
So, she let me know that you told the class that meat eating is bad for the planet and that a plant-based diet is best for the environment and our bodies. I am a nutrition researcher by trade (masters in biochem from the U and I'm also a licensed nutritionist) and I'm actually writing a book on the topic. Although in the past, science agreed with you, the emerging science is painting a very different picture.
It turns out that our ancestors were largely carnivorous and every primitive culture that we've studied ate an animal-based diet. Not only is meat NOT the cause of chronic disease (this is commonly called the diet-heart hypothesis and was started at the U where I went to school - the science has been disproven and it is now widely accepted science that all chronic disease is actually caused by sugar and grains) but the environmental science has been off, too. I discovered during my graduate work that all nutrition science in the US is industry funded, and the U of M nutrition department is funded largely by the grain industry, as well as Coca-Cola. The system is very broken and the science disproved the links between animal fat and chronic disease long ago, but the systems in place (including Big Pharma and the USDA - corporate grain and bean farmers) hugely profit off of this misinformation.
Although animal flatulance does contain methane, this addition to climate change is miniscule compared to the carbon that is removed from the atmosphere by grazing animals. When cows eat grass (just like in the wild), they cause the grass to dump carbon into the soil (because the grass has a symbiotic relationship with the soil fungus, providing it with sugar - a 6-carbon molecule - in exchange for micronutrients) sequestering carbon from the atmosphere and creating up to a foot of topsoil/year. If the earth's grasslands were covered in cattle, it would completely reverse climate change in our lifetimes. I am including some scientific articles for you to peruse if you are interested in learning more.
Although I completely respect your right to decide to not eat meat because of spiritual or animal-welfare reasons, I want you to know that it is scientifically a much less healthy diet and ironically, mass agriculture of grains and beans is actually the cause of desertification (removal of topsoil), which has contributed more carbon to the atmosphere and climate change than ALL fossil fuel use combined. Plant based diets are actually causing climate change, and grazing cows is one of the only things that can reverse it. And red meat is actually the healthiest food for the human body. Humans aren't grainivores, we don't have a gizzard (the organ that grinds grains into flour in the animal's body) and grains are one of the newest foods to be added to the human diet.
Her dad and I wanted you to have access to this scientific information and hold no hard feelings about your teachings because we know your motives were pure and you want our kids to be healthy and the environment to be saved. We would really appreciate it if you would look over this additional research I'm sending, and please not spread misinformation in the classroom. My daughter was so upset after your meat-is-bad speech that she went in the bathroom and cried. Since our family eats a meat-heavy diet (all grass-fed and organic, of course) this was hugely upsetting to her, and us. Since I began eating a meat-based diet, I have reversed my type 2 diabetes, all of my digestive diseases (SIBO, IBS, and celiac) have gone into complete remission, and I've lost 70 pounds and kept it off for over 5 years.
Thanks so much for listening. I highly recommend watching this TED talk from the leading permaculture scientist Allan Savory, it's one of the top 100 TED talks of all time, and explains how to reverse climate change and save the earth.
https://www.ted.com/…/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s…
And here is an excellent article by one of the leading scientific nutrition researchers in the US about red meat and how it's actually the heathiest food for the human body and was the primary source of nutrition for our ancestors throughout a million years of human evolution: https://chriskresser.com/red-meat-it-does-a-body-good/ He also has an entire ebook (free) online if you want to learn more about the science behind animal-based diets.
Thanks *, we really appreciate you, but we would like you to be aware of the way our daughter was affected by your lesson and have access to the alternative scientific information.
Love, Marissa
Gluten
Wheat is not human food and its protein, gluten, causes gut damage that leads to disease and weight gain.
It’s just the newest fad diet these days to go gluten-free, right? What is this stuff, “gluten,” anyway?
Turns out this newest “fad” actually makes a lot of sense when we look into it. Gluten is the protein found in wheat and most other grains. Although grains (the seeds of grass plants) are mostly carbohydrate, there is a little fat and protein thrown in there too.
So let’s talk about grains like wheat. Grains are the newest food to be added to the human diet, from an evolutionary perspective. We’ve only been eating grains for about 10,000 years, at most. And that’s only in certain areas of the world. When you look at the fact that homo sapiens have been on the planet for over 400,000 years, and our older ancestors dating back to homo habilis have been on the planet for 2.3 million years, this is only the blink of an eye. Actually, this means we’ve been eating grains for only the last 0.04% of the time our species has been on this planet.
Grains are not human food. We do not have a gizzard, which is the organ that grainivores have that grinds the grains into flour inside their bodies. This is why we have to grind grains and cook them in order to eat them. Grainivores also eat little sticks and rocks to help their gizzards grind up the grains. Have you ever seen a wheat berry? It’s like a small rock. We would never eat that in the wild, that’s why our ancestors did not consider it food for the first 99.96% of human history.
Grain-eating started with the agricultural revolution. Humans realized that they could stop following the herd they relied on for survival, and stay in one place, if they planted wheat fields and kept domesticated animals. Thus was born agriculture. We needed foods that could be stored when animal foods were scarce, and increasingly came to rely on grains and beans, in addition to root vegetables, squash, and other foods that could be stored. These were used to supplement the animal foods that were available at the time.
Humans began experiencing a great increase in sickness and disease with the adoption of this foreign food group. Although many of us think of ancient humans as living short difficult lives, this is the experience of more recent people, after the agricultural revolution (like the middle ages). Pre-agricultural humans, or hunter-gatherers, often lived long and healthy lives. There are mummies that date back to pre-agricultural times that have all of their teeth and are believed to be close to 100 years old.
Our human body evolved over millennia to be an amazing machine, when fed the right foods. Grains cause disease in multiple ways. First of all, there are a plethora of “anti-nutrients” in grains that strip vitamins and minerals out of the human body. The primary anti-nutrients are phytates, which bind to minerals and results in rickets, slowed skeletal growth, iron-deficiency anemia, and leaky gut syndrome. Leaky gut is a very common issue in our society today.
The main diseases that result from grain eating, besides vitamin and mineral deficiencies, are autoimmune disorders. When we eat grains, especially whole grains - which are actually worse for our bodies, the bran part of the grain that makes it a “whole grain” rips tiny microscopic holes in our intestinal lining. (By the way, the reason they tell us whole grains are better for us is because they cause a slightly slower raise in blood glucose. This is similar to saying that low-tar cigarettes are slightly better for you than high-tar cigarettes so you should smoke a lot of them.)
When we have these holes in our intestinal walls, intact proteins from our diet can leak into our blood stream instead of being broken down into individual amino acids. When the body sees certain intact proteins from our diet (like gluten and casein - milk protein) in our blood, it thinks this protein is a pathogen because many germs and pathogens are long protein strings. The body reacts with an immune response against the imagined invader. When this goes on for years, the immune system eventually turns on its host and causes auto-immune problems. These include: Type I Diabetes Mellitus, rheumatoid arthritis and joint problems, Crohn’s disease, colitis, celiac, lupus, chronic fatigue syndrome, psoriasis and eczema, hypo- and hyperthyroidism, depression, anxiety, Sjogren’s syndrome, and irritable bowel syndrome, among many others.
So why are grains the base of the food pyramid and why are we told to eat a diet high in “healthy” whole grains? Well, the most obvious explanation is because the grain industry likes it that way. They make a lot of money off of our grain-eating ways, and the health care industry makes a lot of money off of treating these diseases. The reason this misinformation has been perpetuated for so many years, especially in our country, is because nutrition research in America is almost exclusively industry-funded. There is almost no federally-funded nutrition research in the U.S., like there is in many other Westernized countries. This means that most of the nutrition research here is funded by groups like the grain and sugar industries. This obviously sways the results of the research, and which studies not only get funded, but which studies get published.
Many people are forced to eat a diet higher in grains and other cheap carbohydrates because animal foods are more expensive. There is also an incorrect belief that grains and plant foods are easier on the planet that growing animals. Ironically, these days we not only eat grains ourselves but feed it to our domesticated animals – like chickens, who are omnivores and eat worms, and cows who are supposed to be eating grass. But is it really cheaper when we look at the costs of health care, and living shorter lives? There is a quote I like that says something like, Pay for food now or doctor’s bills later. When the destruction of the soil and our bodies is taken into account, we find that grain eating is not actually cheaper or better for the planet.
But how can we possibly give up bread? The staff of life… Give us this day… Crusty baguettes and cake and donuts and cookies. Well, gluten-free has been a “fad” long enough that wonderful alternative have been put on the market. I have been off of gluten grains for almost a decade, and don’t miss them at all. One can still eat sandwiches, cake, cookies, and pizza – mostly made out of almond flour and coconut flour, mostly made at home. But I choose to eat healthy animal foods. And in addition to watching the pounds melt away, I got to watch numerous health problems melt away as well.
You Are Only As Healthy As Your Gut
Healing the gut can reverse auto-immune disease and obesity.
Science is just beginning to study and understand the world of bacteria within our bodies. There are trillions of these organisms inside each human, and they can be classified as beneficial or pathogenic (disease-causing).
Essentially, the human body is a donut, with a hole in the middle that goes from your mouth to your anus. The bacteria and food in the donut hole are not technically “in” our bodies, until they are actively absorbed by our bodies through the enterocytes (intestinal cells). With ten times more bugs than cells in our bodies, we are actually 5% human DNA and 95% bacterial DNA!
Another, more harmful way that food and bacteria make it from the intestines into our blood stream is through tiny holes between the enterocytes. These tiny holes are called loose junctions, or “leaky gut”. Some researchers claim that up to 90% of people in the West have some amount of leaky gut, which is caused by a range of things like gluten (a protein found in grains like wheat) and other plant toxins, antibiotics, yeast overgrowth, a high-sugar diet, pharmaceutical medications, NSAIDS (ibuprofen or Advil), alcoholism, and drug use.
Two problems appear when our enterocytes are damaged and become leaky. First of all, food and bacteria from our gut leaks into the blood stream and the body responds with an immune attack. It not only attacks the invading bacteria, but also sees intact proteins (long strings of amino acids) from our food leaking into the blood stream, rather than the single amino acids that are normally absorbed through the intestinal cells. The body also “thinks” these are bacteria (like gluten from grains, casein from dairy, alkaloids from nightshade vegetables, and more) and attacks them as well. Over long periods of time, these heightened immune responses wreck havoc on the body and likely contribute or cause the development of autoimmune diseases like type I diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, lupus, celiac, and multiple sclerosis.
The second way that damaged enterocytes further cause problems in the body is due to their inability to digest food properly. Instead of the food being broken up right away by enzymes (made by the enterocytes), the food sits in the gut and putrefies. This rotting food feeds the pathogenic bacteria, especially the high carbohydrate, high sugar diets that are common in the West. When there is an imbalance in bacteria in the gut, it is referred to as “gut dysbiosis” and has been associated with inflammatory bowel disease, colitis, chronic fatigue syndrome, and cancer. For many people, the feeding of pathogenic bacteria also leads to bloating, belching, acid reflux, and constipation/diarrhea.
Not only are high numbers of pathogenic bacteria species thought to contribute to autoimmune disease and the diseases of gut dysbiosis, but they also cause inflammation and links are being made to chronic diseases as well like heart disease, type II diabetes, and obesity. The links to obesity are especially fascinating. A study from Washington University, published in the elite journal Science, showed that specific bacterial species are correlated with either obesity or thinness. Previous studies have found that obese people and thin people often have very different strains of intestinal bacteria. In this study, they inoculated germ-free mice (grown in a sterile environment) with bacteria from human twins, one of which was obese and one of which was thin. The mice receiving bugs from the obese twin gained statistically significant more weight than the mice given bugs from the thin twin, despite being fed the same chow. Although there is still much to be studied and learned about bacteria, studies like this show that it is a very promising topic in the field of obesity research.
Another common gut problem that causes discomfort for many people is SIBO – small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. This is caused by an overgrowth of pathogenic species in the small intestine, rather than the beneficial bugs being concentrated in the large intestine, or colon, like they are in a healthy person. When numbers in the small intestine are closer to 10^4 rather than 10^3, which is normal, this can cause also symptoms like bloating, belching, acid reflux, stomach distention and pain.
Although much nutrition advice in this field has centered around adding probiotics like acidophilus to the diet, recent research has shown fermented foods (yogurt, kimchi, raw sauerkraut, and kombucha) to be even more effective at inoculating the digestive tract with beneficial species and healing disease. Foods like coconut oil and bone broth have also been found to be effective at healing leaky gut and helping beneficial species to thrive.
There is new research showing that, in addition to taking probiotics, consuming a gut-healing diet for a period of time can be helpful in starving pathogenic bacteria and feeding beneficial bacteria in cases of autoimmune diseases as well as other diseases associated with gut dysbiosis. One such way of eating that has become very popular and effective for many is the SCD – specific carbohydrate diet. This moderate-carbohydrate diet recommends limiting carbohydrates that are made of two or more sugar molecules linked together (sucrose, maple syrup, and starches from things like potatoes, rice, and flour) based on the idea that damaged enterocytes are unable to produce the necessary enzymes to break them down and they stay in the gut and feed the harmful bacteria. Carbohydrates made of single sugars like fruit and honey are allowed, since they don't require enzymes to be digested and so don’t feed the harmful bacteria but instead are absorbed quickly and used for energy by the body. Most individuals find that after a healing period, problematic foods can be added back into the diet without causing symptoms.
Another similar diet that is growing in popularity is the GAPS diet. This stands for Gut and Psychology Syndrome and was designed by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride. Her book by the same name details the relationship of high number of pathogenic bacteria and their relationship to issues of mental illness, including depression, anxiety, bi-polar disorder, the autism/Asperger's spectrum, and more. Her theory, which is fascinating and has shown correlation in a number of scientific studies, is that pathogenic bacteria emit neurotoxins which pass the blood-brain barrier and contribute to mental illness. This also explains the exponential increase in depression and mental illness we've seen in Western countries in the last century. She also discusses a phenomenon she calls "glue ear," which is the idea that reoccurring ear infections (otitis media) in children are caused by pathogenic bacteria making their way into the inner ear through the opening into the throat and causing mucus and infection in the middle ear. Many families report success treating depression and autism spectrum disorders in children using this approach.
There are a number of supplements that are useful in removing the pathogenic bacteria and helping the beneficial bugs to take hold, as well as lowering the numbers of the harmful species present with these intestinal problems. Often the harmful bugs include yeasts like Candida Albicans, which are able to take hold after the administration of antibiotics which kill off multiple species of good and bad bacteria and allow yeasts to take over. The yeasts and other harmful bugs create a home for themselves called a “biofilm” that makes it hard for beneficial bugs to kick them out. A commonly known biofilm is the plaque on our teeth, and one can think of biofilms as a plaque that covers the intestinal lining. There are a number of biofilm disruptors on the market that can be useful, as well as herbal versions like grapefruit seed extract and coconut oil.
Although definitely a strange concept at first, the medical treatment recently discovered that has shown the best results is the fecal transplant. Like it sounds, this involves taking the feces or isolated bacteria from the feces of a healthy person and injecting it or orally delivering it into the colon of the unhealthy person. For diseases with high mortality like Clostridium difficile, it has shown to be astonishingly effective. Although in its infancy, methods like this will likely be explored as a cure for a growing number of diseases and ailments.
Lastly, a group of researchers created the Human Food Project and are now conducting a study called American Gut, looking into the variety and specific species present in different Americans. For $99 (or less for 2 or more people’s samples) they send you a home kit to mail them a feces sample. They then send you a list of your bacteria species and their relative abundance in your gut, as well as on your skin and in your mouth, and compare this to other Americans (including famous author Michael Pollan) as well as a primitive tribe that they have been studying.
This very exciting field of science holds a lot of promise for people suffering from this long list of gut-related, auto-immune, and chronic diseases. There is much to learn but from what we already know, dietary changes and some simple supplements can be even more effective than any of the medications that western medicine now prescribes – which often only treat the symptoms and not the underlying reasons for the disease.
If you suffer from any of these digestive problems or diseases, I am a Licensed Nutritionist and Life Coach with an advanced degree in Nutritional Biochemistry. If you would like to schedule an appointment by Skype/FaceTime or in person (in the Minneapolis area), please email me at marissa@thecarnivorenutritionist.com. We can tailor a diet and supplement schedule tailored to your individual symptoms and food preferences, and create increased health and vitality in your body!
Recommended reading:
http://chriskresser.com/a-healthy-gut-is-the-hidden-key-to-weight-loss
http://www.gapsdiet.com/
http://terrywahls.com/tag/intestinal-bacteria/
Eating Low-Carb for Health and Weight Loss
What should we eat?
THIS IS AN OLDER ARTICLE, I NO LONGER RECOMMEND A LOW-CARB DIET EXCEPT IN SPECIAL SITUATIONS! AFTER SEED OILS ARE DETOXED, WE CAN SLOWLY INCREASE CARBOHYDRATES AND DECREASE FATS FOR INSULIN SENSITIVITY AND HEALTH! ASK ME FOR MORE INFO!
Some of us have health problems that require a more strict Carnivore way-of-eating, or even Beef-Water-Salt, which is the ultimate elimination diet. Some of us don’t have metabolic disease or weight to lose, and do well on a more animal-based diet including the least toxic plant foods. I would love to meet with you and help you find the version that works best for your body.
Once we realize that the food pyramid has been upside-down our whole lives, what do we eat? We pretty much have to re-think everything that goes in our mouths. They have literally turned the truth completely upside-down on us! They tell us that sugar is innocent and that animal fat is killing us, and the exact opposite is true. Sugar, grains, and industrial seed oils are killing us and animal fat is the healthiest food we can eat. Saturated fat is absolute health food! The Inuit (Eskimos) are the healthiest people we've ever found and they eat 80% animal fat. There is an amazing researcher responsible for this discovery, Vilhjalmer Steffansson. You can read his book, My Life With the Eskimo, on google books.
The question people most often ask me is, What should I eat? So here is a list of meal and snack ideas.
Breakfast: easy peasy, as long as you love eggs. If you don't, it's time to learn. After a couple days of eggs for breakfast, you will start to crave them right when you wake up. Eggs have an amino acid profile of 100. They essentially set the standard for all other proteins. Plus they are full of extremely healthy cholesterol (doesn't cause heart disease, that is a huge myth), other healthy fats, and vitamins. If you aren’t feeling like having eggs, yogurt with berries is a great option. For weight loss, choose nonfat yogurt without “nonfat milk powder” which is just additional lactose.
If you eat some less toxic plant foods and tolerate dairy:
Frittata: 8 eggs, 1 cup of cheddar cheese, half cup cream, 10 pieces of pastured bacon or sausage, any other ingredients you want like zucchini, sweet potato, or olives. Fry up the meat and veggies in some butter or bacon fat, then stir in the beaten eggs, cream, and cheese, then bake in the oven for 20-30 mins at 350 degrees until cooked through. Delish.
Another amazing breakfast recipe that can be premade and frozen to have something quick to grab in the morning: Bacon Muffins! These are fabulous. There is a recipe on my blog.
Lunch or dinner ideas:
Wild caught salmon, with melted cheese, dill, and lemon.
Grilled brats with pickles and mustard, with or without cheese melted on top.
Coconut curry - soup or stirfry with any veggies or meat you want, fish sauce, ginger, garlic. I like to use half broth and half coconut milk to cut down on fat and calories.
Sweet Potato Shepard's Pie, heavy on the meat and non-root vegetables and light on the sweet potatoes, covered in butter and/or cheese.
Zucchini noodles with homemade alfredo sauce and your choice of animal protein.
Any big piece of meat like a steak or some oven baked chicken, with a side like squash, sweet potato, or cold cucumber salad, etc. Baked chicken breast is really good with herbs, garlic, and butter smeared on it before you bake it.
Pot roast. So easy and so good. Brown the roast in a hot pan with some bacon fat or butter in it, then pour broth over the top, add onion and garlic powder, and a couple carrots and cook on low heat for many hours.
Three awesome dessert ideas: yogurt with berries and a drizzle of honey, Panna Cotta, or Egg Custard. Recipes are on my blog. These can be made with honey.
Hope that gives you some good ideas to get you started! Remember you only need to measure carbohydrates, keeping fat low and protein high for weight loss. Keep your carbohydrates below 50 grams/day for weight loss for most people - about 2 small servings, spaced throughout the day. Then eat all the beef, pastured pork and chicken, yogurt, eggs, and fish that you desire and watch the pounds fall away! Happy eating!
Margarine and Frosting
A Day in the Life of a Nutrition Student
A Day in the Life of a Nutrition Student
My professor started out our first day of Advanced Human Nutrition this semester with the baffling statement: “Its very hard to find a study that shows that soda is bad for you.” She laid this whammy on us while introducing our first assignment. We had to design a scientific study on a nutritional topic of our choosing. I immediately weighed my options - definitely something related to a low- or no-carb diet. We didn’t actually have to conduct the hypothetical experiments, obviously, but just come up with a design.
Since a single soda can has 12 teaspoons of sugar in it, I knew there were scores of studies linking sugar consumption to a host of problems: type II diabetes, ADHD, obesity, high blood pressure, and heart disease, to mention a few. Amazingly enough, not a single student raised a hand, including me, to question this inane comment. What is it about the science of nutrition that turns us all into mind-numb zombies? We are weary after decades of contradicting information, unable to sort out the conflicting advice and filter out any remaining truths. Here we sit at a Big Ten University, and no one has the confidence to argue with a professor with the gall to state that there is no scientific proof that 12 teaspoons of pure sugar is bad for you.
And then, just when I thought it couldn’t get worse. To further aid us in generating topic ideas for the assignment, she put up a powerpoint slide with the steps of the scientific method displayed. Underneath the first step, Hypothesis, was the question: “Is the Atkins diet more effective at weight loss than a calorie-restricted diet?” Here we go, I thought. “Has anyone here tried the Atkins diet?” The question hung in the air a few seconds, and slowly an athletic guy a few rows down and I raised our hands. She turned to us. “How did it work?” She asked with a slight smirk.“Good,” I said, and Beefcake College Boy agreed, "Awesome."
“Does anyone have an idea as to why there are so many testimonials of people losing weight on the Atkins diet?”
A girl across the room raised her hand. “Because fat has more calories than carbs or protein, so you get full quicker and eat less calories.” Prof nodded approvingly.
“Anyone else?” I felt my hand go up before I could stop it. “Yes?”
“Well, a low-carb diet utilizes little or no insulin for digestion, and insulin is the primary hormone that promotes fat storage in adipose tissue.” I could have gone on about triglyceride formation, but I left it at that.
Her smirk turned into a puzzled stare. “Hmm,” her brow furrowed, she turned away, and flipped to the next slide without responding to my statement.
Second step: Design a scientific study to attempt to answer the question. This slide said: “Put half the study participants on a reduced calorie diet, and half on the high-fat, low-carb Atkins diet.” And in the bubble below: “Study shows no difference between weight loss at one year amongst the two groups.” I shake my head. Unbelievable. The only thing that causes weight gain is carbohydrates. I scribble down the journal and article number in small print below the proclamation. “Lastly, see if follow-up studies agree with your finding, and develop the hypothesis into a theory.” Underneath was an additional study that found no increased weight loss with the Atkins diet. I scribbled it down, too, vowing to look up the studies when I get home, knowing the real story won’t be quite so simple.
And my prediction was right. I found the first study right away at home, and it turns out that the half on the Atkins’ plan lost significantly more weight at 3 months, 6 months, and still an average of over 9 pounds more at a year. Then, in complete contradiction, the study also claims, “Participants had no significant difference in weight lost at 12 months” in the next paragraph. I suppose the margin of error could be large enough for that claim, but I suspect that my professor isn’t the only professional who twists the results of studies when they don’t show what is predicted by mainstream nutritional advice.
Reading further, I discovered that the researchers used a “self-help” style of nutritional advice, simply handing half of the participants a copy of Atkin’s diet book and leaving them to forge through an introduction to a low-carb diet on their own, while trudging through this maze of nutrition misinformation in our carb- and sugar-obsessed culture. As if large group of study participants could adhere to the no-carb Atkins diet without any counseling or support! Obviously this was a ridiculous assumption on the part of the researchers, as they admit that ”attrition was high” and that “during the first three months, the percentage of patients who tested positive for urinary ketones was significantly greater in the group on the low-carbohydrate diet than in the group on the conventional diet, but there were no significant differences between the groups after three months,” which of course means that no one was on a low-carb diet and the results of this study at one year are meaningless if your purpose is to study the effects of a low-carbohydrate diet.
The next sentence of this study is very confusing: “There was no significant relation between weight loss and ketosis at any time during the study.” What? This is completely inaccurate. They are completely contradicting themselves. After telling us that the low-carb group had “significantly” more ketones in the beginning of the study, and that “subjects on the low-carbohydrate diet lost significantly more weight than the subjects on the conventional diet at 3 months (P=0.002) and 6 months (P=0.03),” now we’re being informed that there was no “significant relation” between the presence of ketones and weight loss. I printed out the study, wondering what to do with the information. I wanted to raise my hand at the beginning of the next lecture and confront her with the accurate facts, if only to educate my classmates – all future doctors, nurses, and dieticians. A room full of people about to spend entire careers spreading this misinformation and furthering the development of chronic disease, all while attempting to heal people. The irony fell on me like dead weight.
Later in the lecture, she told us that the studies say that the higher a person’s total carb intake is, the thinner they are – and does anyone know why this would be? A student raised a hand and postulated that it must be because they get more exercise. Prof nodded and shrugged, telling us that it was also discovered in the Nurse’s Health Study in the 80’s that those who eat the most are the leanest. She then completely flaked out of any sensical conversation about these facts by stating, and I quote: “In the field of nutrition, it would be nice if we had real rules.”
As if science doesn’t exist. I would have loved to raise my hand and explain most of this. First of all, as for the study that supposedly tells us that eating carbs makes us skinny, obviously there is more at play here than simply calories in, calories out. Different people's bodies have differing abilities to digest carbohydrates as fuel rather than storing them as fat. People with a highly evolved ability to digest carbs can eat more of them, and still have enough insulin and insulin-responsiveness in the cells to use the glucose as fuel and burn it off. People who eat "less carbs" and weigh more are really probably eating less food overall, not just carbohydrates because THEY HAVE A SLOWER METABOLISM and a reduced ability to digest carbohydrates so their bodies are STORING the food they are eating.
And then we get to the Nurse’s Health Study. I love this study. You just can’t argue with a solid, well-executed study involving thousands of reliable participants, even if the findings aren’t at all what would be predicted by modern nutritional theories. Despite the fact that the nurses demonstrated that it is not simply caloric intake that causes weight loss and gain, researchers and professors alike simply brushed aside this inconvenient finding with the explanation that the thin participants must also get the most exercise. This is so ridiculous. Do you have any idea how much more exercise one would have to get to be able to eat an additional 1000 calories a day and still be thinner? You would need to run 10 miles a day or do 2 hours of heated power yoga with weights EVERY DAY. Not likely. Here once again, the cause and effect have been reversed because of a correlation, which does not infer causation. One cannot assume cause and effect just because two concepts are found to be related. In this case, researchers assume that some people are overweight because they consume too many calories. But there is ample evidence that obesity is a hormonal disease, and that people are overweight because their bodies are storing the food they eat as fat because of a metabolic defect. This defect is likely caused by the excessive insulin that is produced by the insanely high amounts of carbohydrates being eaten in our society, as well as many other countries across the globe.
There are a few more random comments that my professor made in the first couple lectures that I just shouldn’t finish this post without mentioning. On the second day of class, she professed while introducing the carbohydrate lecture: “Carbohydrates are my life!” I had to stifle a snort and duck behind the girl in front of me. Later she told us that she is so well known for her tolerant attitude toward sugar and sweets, that recently someone asked her, “Aren’t you the pro-sugar nutritionist?” Now this really blows my mind. As if someone could actually call themselves a nutritionist and be pro-sugar! This is a tenured professor at a major university. Obviously the brainwashing of of academia by the grain and sugar industries is a resounding success! And to then announce it to her college class with a guilty laugh and a breezy attitude was almost more than I could bear. I wanted to get up and storm out of the room, muttering profanities as I slammed the door behind me. She also announced in class one day (and it was in the textbook, too) that if a child has failure-to-thrive because they don’t gain weight for over a year, you should feed them a diet low in fat and protein and high in MARGARINE and FROSTING. Unlimited frosting. I have a friend that actually told me her doctor told her to let her child with failure-to-thrive eat as much frosting as she wanted. Pure sugar, completely empty calories, poisoning the child’s body.
I later found out that multiple studies conducted by this same professor were funded by Coca-Cola. No wonder she’s the “pro-sugar nutritionist”. There was one last off-hand comment toward the end of the carbohydrate lecture by her that pretty much sums it all up: “When you’re working with carbs, you run into problems!”