I have been on the diet for almost two years now. I’ve lost 45 pounds and am near my optimal weight. I am 100 percent symptom-free of Crohn’s disease and haven’t seen a doctor in over a year. I’ve started running 4 miles a day, something that I could never have achieved before. This diet is anything but a quick fix. It takes time to heal the wounds of disease and medication. However, to anyone looking for control over their disease or their weight, I urge them to give it a try. It might just save your life as it saved mine.
Vegetarian Isn’t Better: Ann’s Story
After high school graduation, Ann Woods left her home for a summer waitressing job in Alaska. She had a great time living away from her parents and partying with her friends, but the continual stream of on-the-job glazed doughnuts, burgers, and fries, along with evening treats of M&Ms and Baskin-Robbins ice cream, eventually caused her waistline to balloon. When she came back home to start college in the fall, her weight had jumped from 110 to 135 pounds. She was still not fat but was much heavier than she had ever been. After a bit of friendly razzing from her boyfriend, she managed to lose all the weight by adopting a near-vegetarian diet that emphasized grains, potatoes, lots of starch, and very little fat or meat. At the time, this seemed a prudent thing to do. After all, this type of diet was supposed to be the healthiest.
Ann also began to jog, an activity that soon blossomed into a lifetime interest in running and fitness. Her weight stabilized, and she became lean and fit. Her blood pressure and cholesterol levels were low, but after almost seven years of running, she noticed that her energy began to wane. She was continually tired and wanted nothing more than to sleep after long runs. Ann recovered from one running-related injury only to find herself injured again within weeks. Dark circles formed underneath her eyes, and she caught colds more frequently than ever. She finally discovered that she had iron-deficiency anemia caused by her “healthful” staples of oatmeal, brown rice, beans, pasta, and low-fat yogurt.
Ann discovered the Paleo dietary principles in The Complete Book of Alternative Nutrition, which featured my research. It made a lot of sense to her, and she gave it a try. She replaced her former vegetarian staples with lean meat, chicken, and seafood at almost every meal. Fruits and veggies were no problem—she had eaten a lot of these before her switch. Within a week, Ann noticed that her energy level was stable throughout the day. She no longer had late-afternoon slumps. Her stamina increased, and she was less tired after her runs. After three months on the diet she dropped 5 additional pounds to her present weight of 106, her stomach was now totally flat, and her muscle tone and strength were better than ever. On top of this, her iron-deficiency anemia disappeared, and the dark circles underneath her eyes vanished.
A Nutritionist Loses 30 Pounds: Melissa’s Story
Melissa Diane Smith, a nutritionist and a health journalist based in Tucson, Arizona, is the coauthor of Syndrome X: The Complete Nutritional Program to Prevent and Reverse Insulin Resistance and is the author of Going Against the Grain: How Reducing and Avoiding Grains Can Revitalize Your Health. This is her story:In 1986, I began a job at a health spa and naturally emphasized foods in my diet that I thought were healthy—bagels, muffins, chicken-pasta dishes, chicken-rice dishes, and turkey sandwiches. This type of diet was disastrous for me. During the next year and a half, I gained 30 pounds and developed a whole host of health problems, including a very severe flulike illness that I could not shake, which was much later diagnosed as chronic fatigue syndrome.
In an effort to regain my health, I tried several popular and recommended vegetarian, macrobiotic, and high-carbohydrate diets but grew weaker and sicker on each one. I continued to experiment and eventually stumbled upon the diet that turned my health around. It was based on lean animal protein and lots of nonstarchy vegetables and was entirely free of wheat or other gluten grains, dairy, legumes, processed fats, and sugar.
When I ate this way, the difference in my health was dramatic. I quickly felt more energetic, mentally focused, and less sick. I also began to effortlessly lose the excess weight I had put on. Within about six months, I lost all the weight I had gained and was back to 115 pounds—size 6 for me. It was hard to turn against established nutritional wisdom, but I kept eating this way and totally recovered from chronic fatigue syndrome. The diet was the answer to regaining my health, and it’s kept me trim and healthy ever since.
Losing Weight the Right Way
With the Paleo Diet, weight loss is a continuous, deliberate decline that occurs gradually, over a period of a few to many months. There are no quick fixes here—but then again, quick fixes don’t work. Most people who try such diets are unable to stick with them over the long haul.
You won’t feel hungry on this diet. Protein is a great satisfier. The low-carbohydrate content of the diet combined with its low glycemic load will normalize your insulin and blood sugar levels and will also help keep you from overeating. The weight that you will lose will stay off if you just stick to the diet—all the lean meats, fish, seafood, fresh fruits, and vegetables (except starchy vegetables) you can eat.
Isn’t it time to get started and give your body what it is genetically programmed to eat?
The Paleo Diet is a lifelong way of eating that will normalize weight in everyone
5
Metabolic Syndrome: Diseases of Civilization
It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.
—Alfred North Whitehead
Metabolic syndrome diseases—the diseases of insulin resistance—are the main health problems of Western countries, affecting as many as half of all adults and children. There are four major metabolic syndrome diseases:• Type 2 diabetes
• High blood pressure
• Heart disease
• Dyslipidemia (low HDL cholesterol, elevated triglycerides, and high small-dense LDL cholesterol)
Gout and blood-clotting abnormalities are usually grouped with metabolic syndrome diseases, too, and so is obesity.
When people become insulin-resistant, the pancreas must secrete more insulin than normal to clear sugar (glucose) from the bloodstream. This creates a state in which the blood insulin level is elevated all the time.
Insulin is a major hormone that affects nearly every cell in the body. A chronically high blood-insulin level is thought to be the underlying culprit in all diseases of metabolic syndrome. But these are all complicated diseases, with many contributory factors.
Some scientists believe that high-saturated-fat diets make insulin metabolism less efficient. Others, including Dr. Gerald Reaven at Stanford University, believe that high-carbohydrate diets—both low- and high-glycemic foods—are to blame. Still others single out high-glycemic carbohydrates. However, the obvious has been ignored: Most people who develop obesity and diseases of insulin resistance do it with mixtures of high-fat and high-glycemic carbohydrates. Some examples of these bad food combinations: Baked potato and sour cream. Bread with butter. Eggs with toast and hash browns. Pizza with cheese. Ice cream, candies, cookies, chips. These and all of the other processed foods we eat contain both a high-fat component and high-glycemic carbohydrates.
With the Paleo Diet, it doesn’t matter which of these kinds of foods ultimately cause insulin resistance—because these unnatural food combinations aren’t part of the picture (except as Open Meal treats). Your meals won’t suffer—in fact, they’ll be richer, more varied, and more delicious than ever. Instead of fatty gourmet ice cream, treat yourself to a bowl of fresh blueberries or half a cantaloupe filled with diced strawberries and walnuts. Instead of fish sticks, how about peel-and-eat shrimp or a lean grilled steak? We’ll get to specific recipes and meal plans later in the book.
Healing Metabolic Syndrome: Jack’s Story
Jack Challem, known worldwide as the “Nutrition Reporter,” is a leading health journalist with more than twenty-five years of experience reporting on nutrition research. He is a contributing editor for Let’s Live and Natural Health magazines and
the coauthor of a number of popular nutrition books.
When I started writing my book Syndrome X: The Complete Nutritional Program to Prevent and Reverse Insulin Resistance, I was in denial about having the early stages of Syndrome X. I was 48 years old, weighed 170 pounds, had a 38-inch waist, and a fasting glucose of 111 mg/dL. I should have known better. I made a point of getting back to the very diet I advocate in my book, Syndrome X. I also stopped eating all pasta and virtually all bread. Basically, I was following a Paleo Diet with lean meats and a lot of veggies.
In three months I lost 20 pounds and 4 inches from my waist. My fasting blood sugar was 85 mg/dL. My blood cholesterol and triglyceride values also improved. It has been extremely easy to maintain these improvements. Eating the Paleo Diet is simple and tasty.
How Insulin Resistance Increases Your Risk of Heart Disease
High-glycemic carbohydrates cause an increase in your blood triglycerides and a decrease in your good HDL cholesterol. They also cause an increase in a special type of cholesterol in your bloodstream called “small-dense LDL cholesterol.” All of these changes in blood chemistry severely increase your risk of death from heart disease.
Small-Dense LDL Cholesterol
In recent years, small-dense LDL cholesterol has emerged as one of the most potent risks for atherosclerosis, the artery-clogging process. The study of atherosclerosis has become increasingly specific. First, we had cholesterol, then HDL and LDL (good and bad) cholesterol, and now a particularly bad kind of LDL cholesterol whose small, dense particles are ideal for artery blockage.
Even if you have normal total and LDL blood cholesterol levels, you still may be at risk for developing heart disease if your small-dense LDL cholesterol level is elevated.
Although low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets may reduce total and LDL cholesterol, they are useless in lowering small-dense LDL cholesterol. In fact, they make it worse. Dr. Darlene Dreon and colleagues at the University of California-Berkeley have shown repeatedly that high-carbohydrate diets increase small-dense LDL cholesterol particles in men, women, and children. High-glycemic foods increase our blood triglycerides, which make small-dense LDL cholesterol. When we lower triglycerides—by cutting out the starch and the high-glycemic carbohydrates—we automatically lower our small-dense LDL cholesterol.
The Keys to Greater Insulin Sensitivity
The Paleo Diet improves insulin sensitivity in many ways. First, because it’s humanity’s original low-glycemic-carbohydrate, low-sugar diet, you won’t have to worry about triglycerides, HDL cholesterol, or small-dense LDL cholesterol. All of these blood values will rapidly normalize as your insulin level becomes reduced and stabilized.
The Paleo Diet’s high fiber, high protein, and omega 3 fat content all improve insulin sensitivity as well. Unlike starchy carbohydrates, protein causes only small changes in your blood levels of glucose and insulin. By itself, a single meal of pure fat doesn’t change these blood levels, either. The omega 3 fats that are integral to the Paleo Diet actually improve insulin metabolism and cause a rapid drop in blood triglycerides. The high fiber from nonstarchy vegetables and fruits found in the Paleo Diet slows the passage of carbohydrates through your intestines; this slows blood sugar rises and ultimately also improves insulin sensitivity.
Other Diseases Related to Insulin Resistance
It’s only recently that scientists have begun expanding the scope of insulin resistance. In research worldwide, this condition is being linked to many other chronic diseases and health problems. Scientists are exploring the role of insulin resistance in certain types of cancer, nearsightedness, polycystic ovary syndrome, and even acne—although in all of these, as in heart disease, many causative factors are believed to be involved. It is premature to establish a direct cause-and-effect relationship. But if these diseases ultimately do turn out to have insulin resistance as their underlying cause, you’ll be protected—because the Paleo Diet contains all of the dietary elements known to stop insulin resistance.
Breast, Prostate, and Colon Cancers and Insulin Resistance
Over the last five years, scientists have discovered through a chain reaction of metabolic events that elevated levels of insulin in the bloodstream increase blood levels of a hormone called “insulinlike growth factor one” (IGF-1) and decrease another hormone called “insulinlike growth factor binding protein three” (IGFBP-3). The decrease in IGFBP-3 causes tissues to be less sensitive to one of the body’s natural chemical signals (retinoic acid) that normally limits tissue growth. In addition, IGF-1, a potent hormone in all tissues, is a major regulator of growth: Increased levels of IGF-1 encourage growth, and reduced levels slow growth. Children who are below normal height have low levels of IGF-1. When IGF-1 is injected into these children, they immediately start to grow taller. As you might expect, tall children have higher levels of IGF-1. Studies of growing children by Dr. William Wong and colleagues at the Children’s Nutrition Research Center in Houston found that girls who were taller and heavier and who matured earlier had higher blood levels of both insulin and IGF-1 and lower levels of IGFBP-3. Diets that cause insulin resistance—particularly, high-glycemic-carbohydrate diets—increase IGF-1 levels, lower IGFBP-3 levels, and decrease tissue sensitivity to retinoic acid. These hormonal changes, in turn, accelerate growth in developing children.
What does this have to do with adult health? It’s been found that IGF-1 is a powerful stimulator of cell division—growth—in all cells during all phases of life. In fact, scientists suspect that IGF-1 may be one of the primary promoters of all unregulated and tissue growth in the body. But IGFBP-3 prevents unregulated cell growth by causing cancer cells to die naturally through a process called “apoptosis.” Over the last decade, numerous scientific papers have shown a strong association between elevated levels of IGF-1, lowered levels of IGFBP-3, and breast cancer in premenopausal women, prostate cancer in men, and colorectal cancer in all adults. In animal models of many types of cancer, scientists can promote cancer by adding a key ingredient—IGF-1; conversely, adding IGFBP-3 slows cancer. Synthetic derivatives of the body’s natural retinoic acid powerfully inhibit the cancer process in cell cultures. So, the whole chain of hormonal events initiated by elevated blood levels of insulin tends to promote the cancer process.
Two risk factors for breast cancer are early onset of puberty and above-average height. It is entirely possible that the same high insulin levels that elevate IGF-1 and lower IGFBP-3 (in other words, the levels that make children taller and make puberty happen sooner during childhood) also increase susceptibility to cancer during adulthood.
Many women, worried about breast cancer, have adopted vegetarian diets in an attempt to reduce their risk. Unfortunately, it may be that these grain- and starch-based diets actually increase the risk of breast cancer, because they elevate insulin—which, in turn, increases IGF-1 and lowers IGFBP-3. A large epidemiological study of Italian women, led by Dr. Silvia Franceschi, has shown that eating large amounts of pasta and refined bread raises the risk of developing both breast and colorectal cancer.
Most vegetarian diets are based on starchy grains and legumes. Sadly—despite continuing perceptions of these as healthy foods—vegetarian diets don’t reduce the risk of cancer. In the largest-ever study comparing the causes of death in more than 76,000 people, it was decisively shown that there were no differences in death rates from breast, prostate, colorectal, stomach, or lung cancer between vegetarians and meat eaters.
Cancer is a complex process involving many genetic and environmental factors. It is almost certain that no single dietary element is responsible for all cancers. However, with the low-glycemic Paleo Diet, which is also high in lean protein and health-promoting fruits and vegetables, your risk of developing many types of cancer may be very much reduced.
Myopia and Insulin Resistance
Because insulin resistance changes the hormonal profile of the blood to one that facilitates tissue growth, scientists have good reason to suspect that insulin resistance
lies at the root of any disease in which abnormal tissue growth occurs. One extremely common such disease is myopia—nearsightedness—which affects an estimated one-third of all Americans. Myopia results from excessive growth of the eyeball. Although the eye looks normal from the outside, inside it’s too long for the eye to focus properly. Myopia typically develops during the childhood growth years and usually stabilizes by the time people reach their early twenties. New evidence that implicates insulin resistance in the childhood development of myopia may be useful in preventing nearsightedness in young children.
Eye doctors generally agree that nearsightedness results from an interaction between excessive reading and your genes. If you spent your youth with your nose in a book and if nearsightedness runs in your family, chances are good that you’re now wearing glasses or contact lenses. Myopia is thought to stem from a slightly blurred image on the back of your eye (the retina) that’s produced as you focus on the written page. This blurred image causes the retina to send out a hormonal signal telling the eyeball to grow longer. Experiments in laboratory animals suggest that the hormonal signal is produced by retinoic acid. Excessive reading slows the retina’s production of retinoic acid, a substance that normally checks or prevents the eyeball from growing too long. Additionally, recent research shows that elevated insulin also directly contributes to the excessive growth of the eyeball. This may mean that if your children’s diet prevents insulin resistance during growth and development, their risk of developing myopia may be lower.
The Paleo Diet Page 10