Insulin Can Be Irresistible.

ananta says:

I may have potentially developed Sibo and low thyroid function due to 20 years of vegan food life- style and was going to try 30 -day high -fat carnivore meat and eggs only elimination diet prompted by Paleomedicina in hungary where they had outstanding results on 1000s of autoimmune disease and diabetes patients. Then while I was researching carnivore, keto diet I also stumble upon Ray peat’s blogs like yours. I am confused.. what do you think of the paleomedicina’s approach, please?

Nitin says:

Good morning, Namaste. I am from India and reading your articles since last more than six months. I was immensely helped with the (so called contradictory!) information, particularly with respect to the sugar consumption, and I am thankful to you. My story may be beneficial to someone.

I was healthy (male, in my 40s), vegetarian (eggs allowed, but no meat and fish), fond of exercise, trekking etc and for no reason started intermittent fasting and raw food regime. With in three years, I lost from 65 kg to 49 kg and then one day the body collapsed. By that time I had lost my ability to digest food and developed high BP, high TSH, (FT3, FT4 within range but lowish), food intolerances etc etc. I was not able to walk even few steps and had constant nausea, dizziness. Doctors diagnosed it as acidity with IBS/SIBO. Since I knew why I have collapsed, I refused all allopathic medicines and went for wholistic system like the one of Ayurveda. Unfortunately, visiting Ayurvedic practitioners worsened my situation! I then started studying general principles of Ayurveda myself and surprisingly, what I found was in sync with what you mention in your articles.

The ancient system classifies three types of Mind – Body constitutions, viz Kapha, Pitta and Vata. (more on this can be easily found out in numerous reputed websites and blogs). Every person is a combination of all three with one of the humor dominating. As per Ayurveda, the later two are prone to stress, anger, anxiety etc etc. As repeatedly highlighted in your articles, our present day life style has given rise to increased stress, and as a result, the Pitta and Vata humors might be getting vitiated resulting in all sorts of diseases and complications. Ayurveda recommends dietary guidelines to pacify vitiated Pitta and Vata humors. First of all, both types of persons are not advised to fast at all. For Pitta the recommendation is to consume more of sweet, bitter and astringent foods and for Vata it is sweet, sour and salty foods. Sweet and milk is common for both. As a matter of fact, the raw sugar (called as misry ) is praised in Ayurveda as being cooling, strengthening and tonic which pacifies both Vata and Pitta humor. People in India used to eat lots of sweets made up of milk and sugar. Our elders used to say, ‘God showers good things on him who consumes lots of sweets’! We worship deities in the temple and the food offerings to them is invariably some type of sweet.

Unfortunately, with the onslaught of the so called mainstream medical recommendations, more and more people are refraining from sweet consumption. Even the Ayurvedic practitioners are falling pray to these, and asking people to cut the sugar consumption. Almost all the Ayurvedic doctors I visited asked me to restrict sugar. It needs to be noted here that most of the Ayurvedic herbs have blood glucose lowering effect and not surprisingly, I felt worse after taking them. Sometimes after consuming a heavy dose, I used to collapse and invariably felt ok after consuming some sugar.

It was after suffering for more than 3-4 years that I came across your blog. It gave me some confidence that sugar is something I need. Before getting in to the fad of raw food and fasting, I was a foodie and used to eat everything including milk based sweets. And since Ayurveda too is not against the sugar (for persons with Pitta and Vata constitution), I decided to give it a try. I started consuming sugar in three different ways. In sweet preparations like rice or wheat pudding, in low fat milk and in raw form, 1 tsp, after breakfast, lunch and dinner. And what a wonder, I started feeling the difference within 3-4 days! My energy levels improved, the collapsing episodes almost vanished, TSH came down to 3 from 10, and most importantly most of my food intolerances went away! I also discontinued all the herbal medicines prescribed by doctors and started taking one particular herb which Ayurveda highly recommends for it’s cooling, strengthening and calming effect. It is now almost 4 months and I am much much better. For the first time in last 4 years, I again went to Himalayas and did long and ardours treks to my satisfaction. I feel like winning my life back. I cant say I am fully recovered. I still sometimes feel flared up after eating particular food and have occasional nausea and dizziness. After all, it may not be possible to recover fully at this age if irreversible damage is inflicted due to the 3 years of raw food consumption coupled with fasting and heavy exercising. But one thing is certain, bringing back the sugar has qualitatively changed my health.

I am also silently observing many persons in and around me, who after cutting their sugar intake are experiencing health issues. But the grip of main stream recommendation is firm. People have surrendered all logics to doctors.

So again, thanks for the articles which was a game changer for me.

PS : Long back in one of the blogs (I don’t remember which one), a naturopath in India mentioned about treating IBS in one youth by simply feeding him one tsp of table sugar every hour for three days. As per the blog, the fellow was cured of all the symptoms within that period!