Hello, it's good to hear about the zero carb experiment. I'm going to take this opportunity to mention that I've gone over to the Dark Side! Since August I've been following -- gasp -- a lowfat "whole food plant-based" diet! I was going to write about this a little while back during a brief flurry of messages about Dr. Fuhrman but I didn't get around to it. Anyway, here's the story... 

Some of you will know me as a once active member of this list, all the way back to when it got started about 20 years ago. I was a True Believer in the basic premise of lowcarb paleo: I.e., that the optimal diet for human beings is paleo, and paleo is necessarily low in carbohydrates. And I believed the corollary principle that high carbohydrate intake causes insulin surges and eventual insulin resistance, which brings metabolic syndrome and various chronic diseases. I had questions about certain details of paleo diet, which we discussed to death on this list, but I never doubted those core principles. 

Nevertheless, I didn't have much success actually following the paleo diet, especially not the very low-carb or zero carb versions of it. I failed to lose weight and in fact slowly gained weight over the years. My blood pressure went up, my cholesterol numbers, never very good to begin with, got worse (Yes, I know the significance of those number is disputed in the lowcarb community; I was one of the cholesterol skeptics). I gradually turned into the very poster boy for metabolic syndrome. To make it worse, about a year and a half ago I had elevated PSA readings, leading eventually to a prostate biopsy. The biopsy was negative, as was the DNA damage test that they now do on biopsied prostate tissue. I redoubled my efforts to do ketogenic paleo and my PSA went even higher. 

I don't want to claim that my diet was the sole culprit here, because the reality was that I had great difficulty complying with it. For years--decades, in fact--I'd go from "clean" low-carb or zero carb paleo to some kind of middle ground, then fall off completely, then start up again...over and over. I just couldn't make it work. 

Almost a year ago, I stumbled on a video by this Australian fellow calling himself "spudfit". Maybe you've heard about him. This guy (Andrew Taylor by actual name) decided, late in 2015, to eat nothing but potatoes in 2016. I thought to myself, This is a recipe for an utter nutritional disaster. This guy may lose weight but he's going to lose massive amounts of muscle, his triglycerides will go through the roof, and his fasting blood glucose will be out of control. I looked at a number of his videos, including his medical checks along the way, and was astonished to discover that not only did none of those bad things happen, his numbers improved. This made no sense. In my mind, a diet consisting of starch -- and not a paleo starch, at that -- and nothing else simply should not work. Not for any human being. But this guy thrived. That was the first white crow. 

I started digging around and came upon this video by Denise Minger: https://youtu.be/KFfK27B_qZY . Minger, as most here know, has generally been no friend of the lowfat vegan crowd. She acquired her reputation as a a health blogger by doing a statistical critique of The China Study. It was because I thought Minger had a certain level of credibility that I watched the whole thing. I admired the fact that she conceded that she had been wrong about some things, but the thing that really caught my attention was her description of the Kempner diet. For those who haven't heard of it, Walter Kempner was a physician who devised what is called the "Rice diet" for those of his patients who were in serious trouble with diabetes and related complications (hypertension, angina, etc.). The Rice diet consisted of--get this-- white rice, fruit, fruit juice, and table sugar. That's it. No meat, no vegetables, nothing else. Portions were strictly limited, although the use of table sugar was not, but in general this was a low-calorie diet. Even so, it seemed like the absolute worst possible diet you could imagine for people with type 2 diabetes, or pretty much any other condition. 

But it worked. That is, Kempner treated many, many patients this way over a period of decades, and kept good records. He published his work. He was able to get people off insulin and other medications, and even phase them back into a more normal selection of foods, very gradually over years. Critics such as Jason Fung have argued that it only worked because it was so low in calories. Maybe so, but in my mindset it still should have been a disaster. The fact that he was successful at all was the other white crow. Denise Minger herself conceded that at the very low-fat, high carb end of the spectrum there seems to be a place where good things happen. At the extreme low-carb end we have ketosis, which we've discussed a lot here over the years. Lacking a comparable term, Minger coined "carbosis" for the other end, where apparently good things also happen. In the middle, where unfortunately most of the studies take place, is what she calls the "swampland" of minor adjustments and minimal returns. 

I decided I needed to get a fresh start, cognitively. That is, I needed to throw overboard all the ideas I thought I knew with certainty. I started researching things I thought I'd settled a long time ago. I needed to listen to the people we have often dismissed around here as the enemy. I read and watched videos by John McDougall, Caldwell Esselstyn, Michael Greger and, yes, T. Colin Campbell. I found the rather caustic videos of the anonymous researcher calling himself "plantpositive" on YouTube, and I made myself take notes and double check things. It was very unpleasant and was causing me massive cognitive dissonance. 

Finally, I decided to experiment. I decided to go with the McDougall plan: lots of starches, some fruit and veg, no added fat of any kind. My only deviation was to have maybe an ounce of nuts a day. After almost a month of this I was scheduled for another PSA test, which I dreaded. To my surprise, and my urologist's shock, my PSA had dropped almost to normal. My total cholesterol had dropped so low it made me even more nervous about cancer. My blood pressure went down within days of starting this program, well before I lost any appreciable weight. And keep in mind I'd been on BP medication for about four years. My fasting blood glucose, which had crept up to 100, dropped back down to 90. This was after three and a half weeks. I don't know what it is now. And yes, I started to lose weight. 

The weight loss wasn't fast, but it was steady at about two pounds a month. It's still going down now. I have relatively little trouble with compliance on this plan. A typical meal is rice and beans, with some vegetables on the side or mixed in; or the biggest baked potato I can find, topped with salsa. I've had three planned "holidays" since August 2016: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and a Sunday brunch with a group of friends in February. I have a glass of wine now and then, or even a pint of beer, but not very often. 

So that's where I've been. I'm telling this not to try to convince anyone of anything. I think I know all the arguments as well as anyone here. I continue to read various blogs by people on all sides of these issues: Ivor Cummins, Jason Fung, and Nina Teicholz, as well as the WFPB ones I mentioned. I haven't read anything by Fuhrman. 

Anyway, Jim's experiment inspired me to write. Jim has always been willing to experiment on himself and share the results with us, which I admire. 

Todd