Faithful Readers;
The last three years have been quite hectic for me. My Potato Hack book continues to be a great success having sold well over 100,000 copies now. I finished a Master's Degree in Biotechnology and started a business, Steele Biotech, providing consulting services to various companies (thank-you cannabis industry!), and also some changes in my day job in the hospital that keeps me hopping. So, I apologize for the slowdown in blog activity, but I still enjoy keeping up with lots of you via email and Facebook.
Winter's Here...a good time to write a book!
The reason I'm here tonight...I've had an idea for another book in mind for some time now, and wanted to get your valued opinion. You all (you know who you are!) were instrumental in getting The Potato Hack published, and even the title came from you guys. What a fun time that was.
The Diet Hack: The book the Diet Industry does not want you to see (working title).
In this book I want to delve into the secrets of Big Diet and deconstruct their methodologies so that people can construct their own Weight Watchers (ooops...WW) or Jenny Craig or Keto and see the same great results as if they paid the average $400/mo that some of these companies charge. And, I'm also finding some really good/cheap/free diet plans that people might want to know about.
Below you'll see my very rough outline draft and a table of diets I'm looking at. Please let me know in the comments if there are any other diets you'd like to see discussed and anything else that might make the book a better experience for the reader.
As I work on this this dark and chilly winter, I'll probably drop a few blog posts to get your ideas on some of the chapters as I work them out.
Thanks!
Tim
Cost
|
Style
|
|
Atkins
|
Free
(Books + Products)
|
Low
Carb
|
Beach
Body
|
$99+
memberships
|
Portion
control + exercise + supplements
|
Biggest
Loser
|
Free
(Books + Products)
|
Low
Calorie + exercise
|
BistroMD
|
$100+/week
|
Reduced
calorie delivered meals
|
Body
for Life
|
Free
(Book) (Going out of business?)
|
Low
fat + heavy exercise
|
Bulletproof
|
Free
(Books + Products)
|
Keto
+ IF
|
DASH
|
Free
(Books + Products)
|
Low
fat
|
Fast
Mimicking Diet
|
$225/week
|
Portion
controlled delivered meals
|
Flat
Belly
|
$19.95/week
+ books (Defunct website)
|
Calorie
controlled Mediterranean Diet
|
HCLF-
Rusty
|
High
carb low fat + exercise
|
|
Herbalife
|
Varies
“reseller programs”
|
Dietary
Supplements
|
HMR
Program
|
~$100/week
|
Low
cal, low fat meals + supplements + exercise+ support
|
Ideal
Protein
|
$450/week
|
Keto
Diet + delivered foods + support
|
Jenny
Craig
|
$99
Enrollment, $19.95 monthly, $450/mo for food
|
Delivered
low calorie food. DNA Service soon
|
Keto
|
||
Kimkin
|
Defunct/Scam
|
Keto
+ Low calorie
|
LEARN
|
Defunct?
|
Lifestyle
modification
|
McDougall’s
Starch Solution
|
Free
(Books)
|
Vegan
low fat
|
Medifast
|
$400+
monthly
|
Food
supplements + Support
|
Nutrisystem
|
$300-$400/mo
|
Delivered
meals/calorie controlled
|
Nutritarian
|
$7.95
- $49.95/mo membership + books
|
Vegan
+ Whole foods + Lifestyle modifications
|
Ornish
|
Free
(Books)
|
Low
fat whole food + lifestyle modification
|
Primal
Blueprint
|
Free
(Books)
|
Low
carb/keto + exercise
|
Rosemary
Conley
|
$80/year
|
Calorie
control + Support
|
Slim
Fast
|
Varies
|
Meal
replacement shakes
|
Slimming
World
|
$10/mo
|
Calorie
counting + support
|
South
Beach
|
$300-400/mo
|
Delivered
low carb
|
SparkPeople
|
Free
|
Lifestyle
modification + Support + Apps
|
Volumetrics
|
Free
(Books)
|
Calorie
control
|
Weight
Watchers
|
$20-$50/mo
|
Calorie
counting + support
|
Wheat
Belly
|
Free
(Books)
|
Low
carb
|
Whole
30
|
Free
(Books)
|
Whole
food
|
Zone
|
Free
(Book)
|
Low
fat + Whole food + Supplements
|
Non-branded
eating styles
|
||
Low
Calorie
|
||
Low
Carb
|
||
Low
Fat
|
||
Pescatarian
|
||
Plant
Based
|
||
Vegan
|
||
Vegetarian
|
||
Western/SAD
|
||
Carnivore
|
||
HCLF
|
Rough Outline:
Foreword
Intro
Part 1 Diet Physiology
Chapter 1 – Weight loss diets. Why we diet. A
universal diet. Fad diets. The Diet Industry. Diet Religions.
Chapter 2 – The Western Diet. Why we get fat. CICO. Diseases of Obesity.
Chapter 3 – Co-factors with diet: Exercise, sleep, and
stress.
Chapter 4 – Genetics (https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-11-childhood-reverse-negative-health-effects.html).
Body types. Unrealistic expectations.
Chapter 5 - How to lose weight. Elements of a healthy
weight loss diet.
Part 2 Hacking The Diets
Chapters xx – Ways of Eating
Chapters xx -
Branded Diets
Chapters xx – Non-branded Diets/Diet Books
Part 3 Keeping it off
Chapter x – Weight Loss Maintenance
Chapter x – Disease Management
Chapter x – Gut Health
Chapter x – Exercise and Lifestyle
*************
Addendum to add pdf of a paper (via dropbox) that Wilbur mentioned in comments:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/nhfvm0r4tlcxkf9/Inulin_Mice_2018.pdf?dl=0
Wow, Tim! That's a lot going on! Best wishes on all. Here's a diet that I keep hearing about, although it may be the circles I run in. :-) I'm going to link to an article about it rather than the diet's webpage itself. The webpage was not quick to navigate, and so I linked to this one so you can get the nitty-gritty fast!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.healthline.com/health-news/what-is-the-trim-healthy-mama-diet#5
In your experience with your own diet success and interacting with others, do you think that a complete mind-set overhaul has to take place for permanent eating changes? With investigation into one's self? If so, will you be sure to include a section on that? I know that in order to keep eating the way I do, I had to have a "come-to-Jesus" moment with myself, food, and my values and priorities. And the insight had to be important enough to stick and make me come back to "good" eating every time I'm struggling. I know when I've challenged people to dig inside themselves (with their anxiety, their marriages, their sensitivity), that's when I lost them. :-) Every darn time, it feels like. And I still watch them suffer and struggle with food/disease.
I enjoyed the photo with this post!
Terri F
Thanks, Terri, I'll check out the Trim Healthy Mama plan. It seems to me that the elements of a good plan are accountability, portion control, and lifestyle changes. The eating style, ie. low fat/keto/etc... is just a hook to lure people in. It probably used to be enough to just show pictures of skinny models cavorting on the beach or celebrity spokespeople, but as the industry evolved, they need more science-y sounding gimmicks, like ketosis or glycemic index, to grab people's attention as they research plans.
ReplyDeleteSome things that keep people from achieving lasting weight loss and good health: emotional/boredom eating, lack of exercise, poor food choices/lack of nutrition, medical conditions, hormones, chemical imbalances, ie. cortisol, and unrealistic expectations. I don't think that "willpower" factors in much, but is often blamed.
I think the worst diet plans are the ones that keep you reliant on them for food deliveries or special supplements...just not sustainable. The best are the ones that help you get to the root of your health problems and encourage major lifestyle changes without becoming dependent on anyone or anything except yourself.
Thanks for commenting, stay well.
Tim
@Terri - re: Trim Healthy Mama.
ReplyDeleteJust spent a couple hours looking at the THM plan/website. I can see what ladies are doing, creating a brand and hopefully attracting customers to a niche market aimed mostly at (religious) new mothers. I'm not sure what denomination they adhere to, if any, and they also seem to downplay the religious aspect to some degree, but I can see this being a popular plan for like-minded women.
Some of the dietary advice seems a bit dubious, strictly not eating carbs and fat together would probably help for calorie control, but if you overeat either carbs or fat, you'll store the excess as fat. Much of what I read reminds me of WAPF dietary advice, and apple cider vinegar plays a big part in their program.
Bottom-line, I can see a lot of people being turned off by the biblical aspect and all the THM branded products for sale, but it is a mostly whole-food diet that does not overly restrict any macronutrients and is focused on nutrition needed by "mamas".
I see they have a couple books, and also a $69.99/yr paywall for more information. They probably do well, but a niche market for sure.
Cool idea. Especially if it gets you blogging more! I miss your posts!
ReplyDeleteI’m not sure how popular it is, but I’m very partial to the Wahl’s Protocol Diet. Very heavy on vegetables, but also high on organ meat. It’s been a while since I read her book, but I remember it being very close to the diet I favor. Plus a high-fiber smoothie. Even that has evolved since we last communicated.
I think something that echoes Terri’s question: I have a friend that was diagnosed with T2 pre-diabete a few years ago. She freaked out. She knew about my experience, and asked lots of questions. After experimenting, she decided to go raw vegan. Not what I would have recommended, but it was her decision. It was fantastic for her. Her health was perfect, she cured several problems that had plagued her for a long time, and she looked great.
Then she was in a car accident. She suffers pain her doctors say is imaginary, her insurance won’t pay, she can’t work to pay medical expenses, etc. She is no longer following her diet, and over Halloween walked around with fistfuls of processed candy. Her old diseases plus T2 diabetes have returned. She has IBS, and has to pay out of pocket for related tests. It’s a shock to see that she can’t get back to where she was a few months ago. And you know she knows what she needs to do, yet she can’t.
Anyway, I look forward to your new book!
Hey, Wilbur! It's painful watching people eat themselves to death, but change needs to come from within.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing I don't like about the Wahl's Protocol is the lack of starchy veggies, but as an intervention for MS, who knows? I've read some critiques that there have been very few MS cases turned around by the diet. (quickly: http://www.thisisms.com/forum/diet-f9/topic24002.html). I have not heard much from Dr. Wahls in the past couple years, I wonder how she's doing? I'm also still a fan of occasional organ meat, fiber, and tons of veggies.
Wow, Tim, good to see you back. Wilbur, great to see you commenting again. I just got a job this week that pays enough I can go back to doing the "Full Wilbur", and I've been revving my metabolism for the past week with the "Henry Higgins Muscle and Strength" course. Wilbur, if you've modified your fiber smoothie, let us know the details! I'm living a few miles from a factory that just recently went from doing liquid to powder form of oligo-saccharides (the milk derivative one), so their sales rep is giving it to me by the kilo at a very reasonable rate. Happy to pass on the savings to any reader of this blog. Another couple weeks and I'll have the final two categories of fibers done and let's see what happens.
ReplyDeleteI will say this; between the Potato Diet and the fiber smoothies, I have gone on and off. And when I am ON, my mental performance, as measured by intense combat video games (person to person, not person to computer), goes up by 1.3 to 1.5 times what it is with regular SAD and no fiber supplementation.
Thanks for the offer on the oligos. Anyone?
DeleteThis Henry Higgins course looks interesting (https://www.oldtimestrongman.com/henry-higgins/). I recently started a dumbbell program of my own. Courses like this have really taken the internet by storm. I'll write a blog post soon about a course I've been following the past year on and off called Visual Impact High Carb Fat Loss, can be seen at:
http://akman2014.visimpact.hop.clickbank.net/?id=carbs
That's cool about gaming speed, lol. Someone should make an app for that, dietary advantage for gaming, haha.
Hi Tim,
ReplyDeleteYou might want to include this IF diet with free e-book.
https://www.fast-5.com/
https://shop.bertherring.com/collections/free-digital-downloads
Thanks! Just added it to my list.
DeleteI have been using the Potato Hack, combined with IF, for weight loss with reasonably good success. I am interested in adding a fiber smoothie, so I would also appreciate hearing more about Wilbur's evolved smoothie. I am not even sure what a Full Wilber is. Anyway, last month, Martin Kendall, in his Optimized Nutrition blog, put forth the position that the best diet combination for satiety, is lean protein plus lower carb vegetables. Since potatoes score off the the satiety chart, would not the potato diet be a worthy contender to a lean protein/veggie diet, for satiety? Thanks again.
ReplyDeleteYes, I'd like to hear Wilbur's recipe as well!
DeleteI also IF, in a way, skipping breakfast most days. I find that when I do eat breakfast, no matter the macro ratio, I'm hungry all morning long, eat a bigger lunch than normal, and get hungry in the afternoon, often giving in to the temptation of M&Ms or a randomly scrounged snack of some sort.
Lean protein and low carb veggies are the mainstay of most fitness and muscle building diets, but don't seem to work all that well for long term weight loss or maintenance, but every body is different. Eat the potato!
Tim - nice to see you back - I've also really missed the posts and comments!
ReplyDeleteCome on Wilbur- don't just tease with the developments!
It’s not that big of an evolution! I really should have thought of it in the beginning.
ReplyDeleteI was never comfortable using purified fibers. In the case of inulin, for example, you just get a bag of white stuff. Is it really inulin? What are its properties (chain length, etc.)?
I eat a lot of onions and garlic, but they aren’t very high in inulin. Things that are, such as chicory, sunchoke, dandelion, and burdock are not reliably available. Chicory is an especially good source.
Then came a study showing that rats fed with purified inulin developed liver cancer.
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-10/uot-urf101718.php
I think (hope) that the fact that chicory was the source of purified inulin is not terribly relevant. I think (hope) it’s just that the inulin was really a processed food. That chicory is not a food we often eat says more about us than it.
So, anyway, I now use a combination of burdock, sunchoke, dandelion, and chicory powders as my main source of inulin. It took me a while to figure out chicory. It’s popular as a coffee substitute, but it’s usually roasted. But cooking doesn’t degrade inulin a lot, so I buy granules and grind them into powder. No more purified fibers for me.
It makes the fiber smoothie very filling!
So now the “full Wilbur” is baobab, green banana, Amazing green grass, amla, maca, hawthorn berry, dandelion root, burdock root, sunchoke, chicory, beetroot, choke berry, and psyllium. I throw some other stuff in for various reasons.
For IF, I frequently do 18-6. But like Tim says, I just eat more during the 6. It makes me fell good though.
Here's the full text via dropbox of paper Wilbur mentions. If I had seen this 4 years ago, my advice would be the same...keep using the fiber powders as adjuncts to a healthy diet, but first try to get fiber from real foods. The paper describes specially bred mice who have had key genes deleted. Only the knockout mice developed liver cancer, and it was caused equally by inulin, pectin, and FOS. They were fed massive quantities, from what I can decipher, and probably would have developed cancer if fed the same quantity of fiber from whole foods.
Deletehttps://www.dropbox.com/s/nhfvm0r4tlcxkf9/Inulin_Mice_2018.pdf?dl=0
That study scared me too. Inulin (FOS) from chicory roots was my only purified fiber supplement, except for occasional potato starch. One teaspoon of FOS is the best thing I've found so far to reduce my slight histamine symptoms, but now I'm not sure what to do.
DeleteWhat does it mean that they had key genes deleted? Do some humans also lack these genes and are potentially at risk?
Also, it seems like they tried a high fat diet (from my limitied understanding of the study, bile acids combined with fibers caused dysbiosis), supplemented with fibers.
This is what Tim has advised against for years, but yet it is what many low carbers do. Especially the Wheat Belly Quack is recommending a diet of purified fats and supplemented with purified fibers.
I might continue with my inulin after all, but be more mindful of when I consume it, make sure it comes with whole high fiber foods.
Wilbur, can you elaborate on your chicory? The roasted ground up coffee substitute is ready available here in Europe. Is it OK to eat the powder you think? Making coffee from it doesn't seem to me to give a lot of inulin, at least I'm not noticing much gas from it.
DeleteI concern I've seen in studies, is that roasted chicory can be quite high in acrylamides:
https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/press/news/datex100518
"The highest average levels of acrylamide were reported in the food group “substitute coffee”, which includes coffee-like drinks based on cereals, such as barley or chicory. Of the 22 food groups sampled, the lowest average levels were found in unspecified bread products."
I think you do well to fast also. Check out this study:
https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006558
"Suboptimal community growth mediated through metabolite crossfeeding promotes species diversity in the gut microbiota"
The way I interpret it, is that it might be good to not always feed the microbiome with plenty of fiber and nutrients. Suboptimal growth promoted a higher microbial diversity. Fasting and caloric restriction could be useful sometimes.
Congratulations Tim, 100,000 copies is nothing short of amazing!
ReplyDeleteAnd a really interesting idea for a new book!
WAPF (Weston A. Price) style of eating seems fairly popular, at least among those interested in nutrition online. But perhaps the general public haven't really heard about it.
I don't know about across the pond, but here in Europe the 5:2 diet has been really popular the last few years. The book has topped many lists for a long time. It was "invented" by Michael Mosley, BBC presenter and author. It's basically eat whatever you want for five days a week, and fast for two days (600-700 kcal on those days). Now a few years on when studies start to arrive, it doesn't seem to do any better than calorie restriction, but it has the advantage that many people find it very easy to follow.
You might find it interesting to look into what people succeeding to lose weight and maintain it have in common in the National Weight Control Registry.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11963849_Successful_Weight_Loss_Maintenance
What they have in common is a low fat diet, self monitoring of weight and diet, and also high levels of physical activity.
But anecdotally, quite many have lost weight and kept it off with high fat diets also. I personally believe that the main factor is some sort of restraint, you either track calories, give up fat, sugar, carbs, animal products, grains or whatever, just something restricting unlimited intake of crappy foods.
The role of physical activity is often downplayed in low carb circles, but it seems to me that the low carbers that do work out do much better. The ones scoffing at exercise are often fat still. In my experience it just gets too difficult to eat tiny amounts of food always. You feel much better burning off lots of calories and then eating them. You feel fit, healthy, and the belly is full.
Stepping on the scale daily is really good for accountability. Variation is big, but during 1-2 weeks you can see the trend. If you never step on the scale, a few pounds creep on so easily, and then it's always a struggle to come down again.
Thanks! %:2 I will add to list. I am a daily weigher and think that it helps with accountability for people who gain easily.
Delete%:2 = 5:2, lol
DeleteIn the past, I have ordered the fiber powders or blends from Amazon, though I don't have much experience with this. I will be looking for less purified versions.
ReplyDeleteIf these are hard to find, would appreciate any reference sources.
I do realize that all of this is individualized based on each persons's situation. Thanks
Been reading the paper this morning. Lots of info, most of what happened in the Toledo mouse lab has no bearing on anyone here pulling a "full Wilbur" no matter what fibers you use.
ReplyDeleteThis HCC (liver cancer) the mice developed also occurs in humans, and the cause in unknown. Risk factors include heavy drinking, diabetes, and cirrhosis of the liver. HCC in humans does not just happen out-of-the-blue, it's a long process that starts in very unhealthy people.
One thing I found very interesting, the gut bacteria that may be responsible for HCC in the mice is contagious.
"To investigate the role of gut microbiota in ICD (inulin diet)-induced HCC (liver cancer),we co-housed dysbiotic T5KO mice (frankenmice) with WT (normal) mice, thus allowing
the transfer of microbiota via coprophagy (eating each others poop). Co-housing of WT and T5KO mice while maintained on ICD resulted in the development of HCC in both strains by 6 months"
That's wild! I suspect researchers might learn a lot from this study, but it will not be a lesson that inulin is harmful to people.
Like I have said for years, the best medicine is prevention, and once gut dysbiosis has taken hold, it's nearly impossible to treat. In this case, the thing that should help (inulin, pectin, FOS...and probably RS or any other fiber) makes things much worse.
And, like someone else said here, eating purified fibers on a high fat diet is like playing Russian roulette.
Eat real food, lots of plants, supplement fiber as you like.
'eating purified fibers on a high fat diet is like playing Russian roulette'
DeleteWould be interesting (for boring old me anyway!) to discuss fat consumption a little. Seems to stir up extremes in view points.
Denise Minger did a very interesting blog post a while back which she promised to follow up on (still waiting!):
https://deniseminger.com/2015/10/06/in-defense-of-low-fat-a-call-for-some-evolution-of-thought-part-1/
I did high fat bulletproof a few years ago and it really messed me up after a while - I've struggled to get back to functioning as well as prior to that experiment tbh.
But really low fat also seems to bring issues (no bile flow, liver/ detox issues).
Any thoughts?
Thanks, Tim, for looking deeper into the study. I’m glad that there seem to be no worries. Now that I’m doing “whole inulin,” I like it. My gut tells me I made a good move.
DeleteI also worried about quality control, honesty, and such. And inulin can be lots of things. It’s like buying a can labeled “meat.” What is it? Where did it come from? Etc.
I buy a lot of my stuff by Starwest Botanicals or Frontier. They test for impurities. And their stuff always has an intense, fresh smell. Psyllium husk, for example. When it’s fresh, it has a wonderful smell. I’d never smelled it with any other brand. All their stuff is like that. I make a hibiscus tea every day, and the smell is intense. I use their cumin, and I can smell it in other rooms after grinding it. I get my dandelion, burdock, and chicory from them. The sunchoke I got in bulk a while back. Can’t find it again. I’m on the hunt for more.
Robert, I seem to find granules more than ground chicory. It’s easy enough to grind the granules to powder. I just add it to my smoothie, so yes I’m essentially eating the grounds. The chicory for some reason is more of an accent - some days I use it, some days I don’t. Sunchoke is pretty much every day. If I know I’m going out to eat, I might skip the smoothie all together. Otherwise I find that I’m sometimes too full to eat all that I want. (I recently went to a restaurant with both sweetbreads AND brains on the menu, and I knew I wanted both plus some. I skipped my smoothie. I was told that I was the hero of the kitchen.)
I’m not too worried about acrylamides. Everything I eat has them. But i find it interesting that I seem to favor raw sunchoke over roasted chicory.
Tim, I’ve read lots of stuff about high fiber, leaky gut, and liver issues. Wish I could remember the specifics. But as an anecdote, I’ve had evenings with friends that quite frankly should have resulted in massive hangovers. (Potato juice is quite intoxicating; can’t believe how much it tastes like tequila!). I have not had a hangover in years. It’s kinda fun actually watching others suffer tha next day. I seem to recall that a hangover might be a sort of “flu” from bacteria leaking into the bloodstream and infecting the liver. Again, not sure.
Wilbur,
ReplyDeleteI am curious how much of the powdered roots you take. I recently read about the benefits of powdered dandelion root and started grinding it and adding half a tsp to my mix. I found it very difficult to grind and can't imagine how much effort burdock root will take to grind. I buy all of mine from SB too. I have been making a daily decoction mixing all 3.
Teddy
Tim,
ReplyDeleteI can't tell from the table of contents if you are planning to address diet for health benefits beyond weight loss. I am sure there are people like me who don't need to loose any weight but are looking into dieting to reverse an autoimmune problem (skin problem in my case).
I have tried several of the diets on your list without any success so I am still looking for a solution.
On the subject of Inulin, my kids and I like the taste so much, we take it directly in a teaspoon and let it melt in our mouths. It feels like cotton candy or powdered sugar, not that I have even put powdered sugar in my mouth knowingly. So after I started reading Real Food, Fake Food, I couldn't help but wonder if what is in the bad is really inulin or powdered sugar.
Teddy
Hi Teddy - There will be some sections on health dieting for sure.
DeleteYes, inulin is sweet, that's why food makers like to put it in snacks. They can be labeled high fiber/sugar free, etc. and still taste sweet. I have not seen anything that suggests to me that inulin is dangerous, even eaten by the spoonful. However, the mouse study we're discussing makes me see that if someone has a really bad gut, ie. Crohn's, IBS, whatever, then loading up on fibers may not be so helpful.
Teddy, I read similar stories. Plus a couple specifically about supplements. Inulin is very popular now, and would be very easy to fake. If not by a separate product, then maybe a lower grade than claimed. Not saying it’s so, but just saying what I feared. I think it’s far less likely that someone would sell fake dandelion, burdock, or sunchoke. Lol. But maybe more likely to be contaminated. Can’t win.
DeleteFunny, I half-assured myself that my inulin was not sugar by tasting it. Mine was sweet, but nothing like powdered sugar. It didn’t even look like powdered sugar. It looked more like granulated sugar, but still not nearly as sweet. For a while, I put a tablespoon in my tea, and even my wife agreed it was not noticeable.
I buy my dandelion root already ground. I had forgotten that it’s really hard to grind. I also have cut and sifted for teas, and one day I’ll get around to making a broth like wildcucumber suggests here
http://garblingthedandelion.blogspot.com/2018/10/medicine-chest-gaining-strength-and.html
Or maybe a stew of some sort.
This might be a useful post for you given your skin condition (not sure if you said and I forgot or if you didn’t say). Especially the relies. I use burdock mainly two ways; as a medicinal plant (tincture) and as gut bug food (powder). The tincture is super easy to do if you have cut and sifted dried burdock, and I can tell you the taste is the same as a good quality commercial tincture.
You might want to get interested in tinctures too. Until somewhat recently, I was skeptical. But it’s very powerful stuff. Very powerful. I like to figure things out on my own, but it’s been very helpful to have wildcucumber keep me out of trouble and to give me hints (and sometimes the answer!). My favorite author is Stephen Harrod Buhner, but Matthew Wood has been useful too. I am quite proud that I quickly cured a painful viral ear infection that morphed into a bacterial one using just plants. But there have been other successes too.
The woo-woo is a necessary part. You gotta believe the woo-woo!
Wilbur - LOL. So glad to have you aboard the bandwagon of woo.
DeleteSpeaking of fake products, I went halfsies with someone on an order of dried echinacea root not long ago. Well, let me tell you, whatever that was, it was neither root nor echinacea. It was splintery, grassy stuff, and smelled like mouldy old hay. My friend had no idea it wasn't the real thing, I just happen to know how echinacea should look and smell. And it took some convincing before she would believe me when I told her we'd been ripped off - she just couldn't accept that a company would do that, she figured it was more likely I was wrong ..
I found the whole experience pretty scary; who knows what kind of harm she or any other unwitting consumer could have come to ingesting that mystery substance!
The supplement and herbal industry can be shady, no two ways about it.
You guys, Wildcucumber and Wilbur had a Burdock root discussion about a year ago and that's when I first used it successfully in a decoction. Life got in the way I guess and I had stopped for a long time only to start again about 20 days ago. After rereading Wildcucumber's post I think/ I hope I am just passing through that stage one she describes because things are bad and maybe even worse than before I started. Stress doesn't help either :-( I am somewhat impatiently waiting for that stage 2 feeling.
ReplyDeleteOn the subject of fake stuff, I got the seeds for something sold as Stinging Nettles and thanks to Wildcucumber again realized it was not.
How unfortunate this whole faking business is for everyone.
Teddy
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DeleteI'd also like to toss in the following resource information as valuable and informative for herbal medicine:
ReplyDeletehttp://7song.com
Lynn, lots of cool stuff there. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteAfter doing a bit more reading, I am not sure I understand the difference between purified and unpurified dietary fibers. Taking a stab at it, I am guessing the unpurified is like ground plant materials and the purified is ground plant materials that have been further processed to remove color, change texture, etc.?
ReplyDeleteI think in this context, any fiber that was removed from the plant is "purified." Potato starch, inulin, pectin, FOS, etc...
DeleteHowever, some fibers get purified even more, especially inulin, which can be mechanically separated by "chain length."
After mulling this over for a few days, the study that showed cancer from purified fibers indicates to me that people with severe gut dysbiosis are the only ones at risk from purified fiber.
But, a good lesson nonetheless is that we should all strive to get fiber from the whole food rather than the easier route of buying it in bags or jars.
Probably humans with severe dysbiosis would notice bad effects from fiber and stop eating it. But mice in a lab doesn't have that choice.
DeleteBright line Eating is a great program for food addiction and has helped many others to gain control of their disregulated eating.
ReplyDelete