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Does LCHF cause diabetes and shrink the brain?

Oldvatr

Oldvatr

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Type of diabetes
Type 2
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Tablets (oral)
Apparently The Star newspaper is printing an article today that states that scientists have proven the a long term high fat diet actually is the cause behind Diabetes, Obesity, alzheimers, and on the way causes the brain to shrink. apparently it is based on this scientific study from 2022
scitechdaily.com

Scientists Discover That This Type of Diet Can Shrink Brains

A Long-Term High-Fat Diet Causes Brain Shrinkage and Waistline Expansion According to recent research, eating fatty meals may not only increase your waistline but also damage your cognitive function. A clear relationship has been shown between mice given a high-fat diet for 30 weeks, causing dia
scitechdaily.com

Now being an inquisitive sort I decided to look into this and see if it holds water.
I do not have access to this paper, so I am assuming that like all good reputable research studies, they source their diet samples from a purveyor of mouse chow for standardised tests.

Now the basic mouse chow comprises a whole grain base of wheat or corn or oats, and with added minerals and vitamins to keep the mice healthy. according to the purveyour I know, the grains are mixed with alfafa, and . soyabean mash and mashed fish for protein, and then the oil is usually a vegetable oil or palm oil. The chow is high fibre, high ish carb, lowish fat to a known nutritional level It has a mix of both omega-3 and omega-6 oils

The High Fat Diet (HFD) that they supply is based not on whole grains, but amino acid doctored casein powder, with cornstarch with added maltodextrin, and for taste sucrose. The oil is purified soyabean oil. Fibre is provided by added cellulose filler. The HFD is thus very high carb, zero protein, and high fat based on omega-6 oils, and has no omega-3 content

So I am not surprised the mice grew fat and diabetic, and their brains suffered lack of omega-3 and also the B vitamins (unless they were added but not specified in the ingredient list). so the study was biassed from the start. The brain needs omega-3 to thrive, so of course it shrank however much of this HFD muck the mice consumed. this is an observation that others have noted with HFD experiments and suspect chow where mice or rat studies are concerned..

Edit to add: another confounder is that apparently mice do not eat sucrose normally, and sucrose contains fructose which mice do not metabolise very well, so the fructose causes dyslipidemia and metabolic distress in the mice and hence may well trigger early onset diabetes. Other studies have shown this effect. This study does not mention dyslipidemia so they do not appear to have measured it.
 
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It also sounds to me like a very high UPF (Ultra Processed Food) diet they’re feeding them. I have done very well on LCHF for about 7 years now. I have MS so know lots about brain shrinkage (!) but seriously my brain is doing extremely well on it and so is the rest of me including losing over 4 and half stone and keeping it off and I’m 68 so it would be showing by now.
 
Well, all I can say is that prior to my T2 diagnosis, I was unwillingly eating a much higher carb diet than my previous normal fat moderate carb style one, and as a result ended up being a brain fogged zombie for several years. After diagnosis, cutting carbs right down gave me back a functioning brain, and replacing those carbs with a little more fat means I'm able to use ketones for (some of) my brain's functions which has worked very nicely for me for well over 9 years now . But then I'm not actually a mouse....

ETA And I've also lost a similar amount of weight to @Wonkylegs with very little actual effort - most of it just dissappearing early on when I cut out those excessive carbs.
 
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I personally wouldn’t read The Star if they paid me. However, I thought it was common knowledge that a high fat diet was actually the cause behind diabetes. They explained this in ’The Game Changers’ documentary. It’s also part of what the ‘Mastering Diabetes’ method is based on too.
 
Here is a treatise given by a nutritionist on Soyabean oil that makes interesting reading to go with the mice study report I posted.

Is Soybean Oil Bad For You? What The Research Says | mindbodygreen

Is soybean oil bad for you, or does it have a place in a healthy diet? We tapped into nutrition experts and scientific research to get you the answer.
www.mindbodygreen.com www.mindbodygreen.com
Now it is a single POV but it does reference a different mice study involving this comodity so does have some science credence.

It is interesting that this article also blames soybean oil for adversly affecting the brain (section 5) also that although the use of this oil in a diet to help blood sugars is mentioned, that is the only positive for diabetics, (which we know the action of any fat will also do by slowing metabolism).

I am surprised the article does not mention that soy contains phytoestrogen, which can produce adverse effects in the human body and is often why many people have a reaction to soy products. Not sure if mice also react adversly as it is difficult to measure, but may be why the sucrose and maltodextrin were added in the HFD to make it more palatable.
 
Here is another article on soya oil which also references the same mice study mentioned in the nutritionist article, but also references other mice studies on top.
www.medicinenet.com

7 Benefits and Uses of Soybean Oil: 3 Side Effects & Nutrition

Soybean oil is a form of vegetable oil that is regarded as safe when used in small amounts during cooking. Learn the seven health benefits, uses, nutritional facts, and side effects of soybean oil.
www.medicinenet.com www.medicinenet.com
Again I cannot vouch for the veracity of this website as it is not one I normally reference. It also seems to be a discourse with a single author.

But these articles point to research being done that seems to confirm that using mice chow with these components in it will in all likelyhood produce skewed conclusions.
 
It is interesting that Casein is a major component in a glue that has been used since the Middle Ages by artists and furniture /musical instrument makers for centuries. It forms a durable water resistant glue. Pity those poor mice being fed it. I hope they did not suffer constipation.
agrocomplex.com.pl

Casein glue | The advantages of casein based glue

Casein glue is a type of adhesive made from the milk protein casein. This glue is very durable for a long time and is highly water resistant.
agrocomplex.com.pl agrocomplex.com.pl

On the news this morning. Casein is 'found' to prevent colon and breast tcancer and may be added to human food in future as a prophylactic. Expect to see it becoming a common ingredient in things like protein bars and fast foods.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

The milk protein α-casein functions as a tumor suppressor via activation of STAT1 signaling, effectively preventing breast cancer tumor growth and metastasis

Here, we identified the milk protein α-casein as a novel suppressor of tumor growth and metastasis. Briefly, Met-1 mammary tumor cells expressing α-casein showed a ~5-fold reduction in tumor growth and a near 10-fold decrease in experimental ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

But Casein appears to make prostate cancer worse according to other resarch

Dr Colin Campbell declares milk and dairy as the worst cancer causing food in the world.
 
Too Late - its started, A Californian company is selling casein protein and artificial whey protein using a robot cow (aka a large Vat) which uses genetically edited fungal spores to make it just by adding water, It is more productive than a cow and produces 97% less greenhouse gases.

Their product is licenced for use in vegan ice creams and artificial cream, and they will have a selection of cheeses soon. It is on sale in Hong Kong and is being reviewed by the FDA for the USA. It has no B vitamins, or D etc, or the other body building elements like choline or L carnitine that normal milk has, but it is also zero cholesterol and ultra low fat,
 
I really dislike articles and researchers who do not differentiate between low-carb with medium/high healthy fats and junk food. The standard high-fat diet they feed the poor rodents for these studies is a list of very highly produced 'food'.
Yes, artificial diets such as that cause a wide range of problems but what does that have to do with us?

(retired researcher/statistician with a degree in biology here)
 
Oldvatr said:
Dr Colin Campbell declares milk and dairy as the worst cancer causing food in the world.
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I wonder if he can explain how the human race (or any mammal for that matter) still exists, if nature actually got one of our basic nartural building block foods so wrong?? o_O
 
Garek said:
I personally wouldn’t read The Star if they paid me. However, I thought it was common knowledge that a high fat diet was actually the cause behind diabetes. They explained this in ’The Game Changers’ documentary. It’s also part of what the ‘Mastering Diabetes’ method is based on too.
Click to expand...

Yes indeedy - the theory that the processed food industry loves. Factories and commercial food kitchens use ultra processed vege oils, add a bunch of sugar - a whole bunch of sugar - and voila! The stuff that we have been eating big time since the late 70s. Very very high carbs. Fats our bodies don't process well. And those two dynamite ingredients in everything. (along with a lot of other factory-made non-real-food concoctions with some great numbers.)
 
Robbity said:
I wonder if he can explain how the human race (or any mammal for that matter) still exists, if nature actually got one of our basic nartural building block foods so wrong?? o_O
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No need. Those lovely vegan studies group at Oxford Martin School of Life Sciences have proof positive that it is harmful based on real research (the EPIC study).

But this report seems to backstep from their earlier work
www.ox.ac.uk

Dairy products linked to increased risk of cancer | University of Oxford

First major study to investigate dairy consumption and cancer risk in Chinese adults has found that greater intake was associated with higher risks of liver cancer and female breast cancer.
www.ox.ac.uk www.ox.ac.uk
 
Regarding the safety of dairy - I ask folks how many milk maids and peasants and dairy-farmers they might have had in their ancestry (and yeah - how far back). And then, of course - how dairy affects them personally. Dairy intolerance as adults is huge in our species - by far and away the majority ( 70% from memory), so it's not surprising.

But, as we know - some really are good with it. No gastro-intestinal side effects. I can be a bit blunt - lots of babies and folks died for us to develop resistance to disease from cows, whilst we developed the ability to digest milk from other mammals with relative ease in order to survive nutrionally( one assumes). A portion of we humans, at least.

I started to watch 'The Game Changers' doco last night, re up above posting reference. It's not my bag on any level (I don't like prescriptive messages when it comes to love, and food!) For me - personal philosophy and personal taste should never be confused with a 'best for all' push species-wide. And I won't get started on the apparent ecological arguments. I'm still stunned by the argument of the doco that lettuce is better for us than salmon or eggs. (Due to the anti oxidants within, and - lettuce is a plant and salmon and eggs are animal products...) I mean - really! I like a bit of lettuce, but a super-food to out-compete eggs? I mean - really!

What is healthy and nutritious and safe - yes as others have said above - ancestral food should tell us a lot. It does in fact, tell us a lot. How we achieve satiety should tell us a lot.
 
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