New Trial: LCHF vs "Medium Carb Low Fat". Who Wins?

[Dillinger]

Here is a picture of a cat

I hope this helps even things out.

Best

Dillinger

 

[Andy12345]

Here is a picture of a cat

I hope this helps even things out.

Best

Dillinger

at last! a cat pic, phew

 

[Spiker]

The cat looks quite brainy, maybe it can join the Eggheads team. As team captain.

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[Andy12345]

The cat looks quite brainy, maybe it can join the Eggheads team. As team captain.

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no way! the cat is on our team, thats the exact face I've been pulling whilst reading you guys

 

[Spiker]

I offered the cat a sardine if he defects. He's thinking it over and says he'll get back to me.

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[mpe]

I think, according to the current dietary guidelines 150g+ is medium, anything less than 150g is "low". And to be honest, I think that 150g is about the upper threshold for some diabetics (although most need much less). There is a good physiological reason for that - a moderately active person burns about 160g a day of glucose,

160g of glucose would actually equate to around 144g of amylose or amylopectin.

Just because the human body can use glucose in this kind of quantity dosn't mean it actually needs this much glucose.

if you eat much more than that it gets converted to fat via gluconeogenesis.

I suspect you mean lipogenesis.
Here it matters which sugars are involved. Just about any fructose or galactose the liver can't use right away for respiration is likely to end up as fat.
Things get more complicated with glucose. Limited quantities can be stored, as glycogen, by the liver and muscles. Together with there being the complication of when insulin is and isn't needed for glucose to enter cells. It might be more the case that anything over 13-20g over 2-3 hours will be treated as an "excess". (Lipogenesis from glucose always requires insulin. In someone who is "insulin resistant" if may account for a higher proportion of glucose metabolism than in someone who isn't.)

GNG is the process of producing glucose other organic molecules.

 

[mpe]

and only when it is in excess to the amount that can be stored as glycogen via glycogenesis. It's 'expensive' to convert carbohydrates to fat and the 'path' less travelled in humans. http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/74/6/707.full

The human body's ability to store glycogen is fairly limited. Thus glycogenesis would only be able to cover dietary "spikes" in glucose. A chronic excess could only be handled via lipogenesis. Both glycogenesis and lipogenesis involve endothermic reactions.

 

[mpe]

What happens then if you train your brain to run mostly on ketones instead of mostly on carbs?

In ketosis the production of ketone bodies only occurs if there isn't sufficient glucose for the nervous system. This includes that from GNG pathways as well as diet.
Even then the brain can use compounds such as lactate and butanoate. The issue is that the molecules in question need to be small enough to traverse the blood/brain barrier rather than mitochondria on neurons being "fussy".
The only cells which actually need sugars are those which lack mitochondria. (Quite a few cell types actually prefer fatty acids over glucose anyway. But they'll "do their bit" for the whole organism if there is a lot of glucose present in the blood.)

 

[Spiker]

In ketosis the production of ketone bodies only occurs if there isn't sufficient glucose for the nervous system. This includes that from GNG pathways as well as diet.
Even then the brain can use compounds such as lactate and butanoate. The issue is that the molecules in question need to be small enough to traverse the blood/brain barrier rather than mitochondria on neurons being "fussy".
The only cells which actually need sugars are those which lack mitochondria. (Quite a few cell types actually prefer fatty acids over glucose anyway. But they'll "do their bit" for the whole organism if there is a lot of glucose present in the blood.)

Which cells lack mitochondria, and do those cells require only glucose, or can some of them run on ketones or fatty acids or lactate etc?

 

[mpe]

I read that in the low carbo paleo diet, if one was to follow it like our ancestor ewe would be eating very lean meats and insects / grubs etc but more important over 100g of fiber a day.

The amount of fat in a "paleo diet" is somewhat controversial. Though there dosn't appear to be any evidence that paleolithic humans ate very lean meat. Nor is the likes of the Inuit diet "low fat".

 

[runner2009]

The fibre element is I think very important. Forty years ago a low carb diet was the norm for diabetes
.It was the hypothesis that fibre intake was a major element in preventing/ ameoliorating diabetes that led to many studies pitting low carb (the 'normal' diet ) against higher carb. These diets were high carb but included between 50 and 90g fibre per day. It was these trials that led to present guidelines. ( these diets did not contain large amounts of refined starches, certainly not some of those foods often advised)
I've linked before to Jim Mann's recent Easd lecture where he discusses this. I also found this recently. It's an old paper , I can't find a date (probably 1980s, definitely not politically correct ! ). In it Prof Mann describes the background against why people started to investigate high carb/fibre diets and some of the results. (impossible to follow up references as the papers mostly aren't online ). http://apjcn.nhri.org.tw/server/markwpapers/mark_books/Downloads/RECENT ADVANCES IN CLINICAL NUTRITION/Diabetes mellitus.pdf

Makes perfect sense how society s definition of carbohydrate actually has changed based upon the type of food we normally eat - again going back to a diet of processed food - home made pasta, breads, cakes, ( even whole grain versions ) are processed foods.

Reminds me of pig fat - today's pig fat is not the same pig fat of 150 years ago nutrient wise.

Fascinating and enlightening

Thx for sharing

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[mpe]

That makes sense.
I'm still not sold on this glycerin burning thing. Particularly on a hypocaloric diet, you need that glycerin group to pull the next trigylceride out of adipose tissue, as a transporter. If you burn your transporter, you need to come up with another glucose molecule to build another glycerol transporter to get the fatty acids out of the adipose cell to burn.

A "trigylceride" is an ester of 3 fatty acids (which are carboxylic acids) and glycerol (an alcohol). I can't see how glycerol (or any other alcohol) could act as a "transporter" for such a molecule. (Any cell storing organic acids in any quantity is going to store them as either salts or esters anyway. Anything else is going to lower the pH of the cytoplasm.)
If the need is to transport individual fatty acids then a mono alcohol such as a fatty alcohol (forming a "wax") or cholesterol (forming a "cholesterol ester") would appear to fit the role.

 

[mpe]

Which cells lack mitochondria, and do those cells require only glucose, or can some of them run on ketones or fatty acids or lactate etc?

The most common cell type which lack mitochondria are red blood corpuscles. The reaction involved is glycolysis which takes place in the cytoplasm to convert a glucose molecule to pyruvate (a ketone as it happens). (There similar reactions for fructose and galactose, but only the blood within the hepatic portal vein is likely to these sugars in any quantity. So in practice it only tends to be hepatocytes, liver cells, which will ever make use of them.)

In order to respire any organic acid at least one mitochodrion is needed. The enzymes involved are not present anywhere else in the cell.

 

[mo1905]

Was this thread about LCHF diet and MCLF diet ? I'm getting lost now. Although it all sounds very interesting


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[andcol]

Here is a picture of a cat

I hope this helps even things out.

Best

Dillinger

lol that cat looks miserable

 

[andcol]

If I ate the cat would that fit better into a LCHF diet or a MCHF diet? I'm sure I would end up in Catogenisis

 

[Dillinger]

Cat is looking sad because of the normally infallible Borofergie's 'glucose to fat by gluconeogenesis' schoolboy error...

 

[borofergie]

160g of glucose would actually equate to around 144g of amylose or amylopectin.
Just because the human body can use glucose in this kind of quantity dosn't mean it actually needs this much glucose.

Absolutely, that was my point. If your body uses about 160g per day of glucose, then if you consistently eat more than that, then eventually your liver will fill it's glycogen stores and turn the rest to fat. Considering how much carbohydrate the NHS and EatWell plate tell us to eat on a daily basis, it's not really surprising that so many of us end up being diabetic.

 

[borofergie]

Cat is looking sad because of the normally infallible Borofergie's 'glucose to fat by gluconeogenesis' schoolboy error...

I've been out of the game for too long. Still a bit rusty.

At least the cat has a beard.

 

[borofergie]

If I ate the cat would that fit better into a LCHF diet or a MCHF diet? I'm sure I would end up in Catogenisis

It makes me sad that a gag of this quality, didn't get more likes.